Kick off of the BEAT AF Study: a real Hope for a Revolutionary Treatment for Atrial Fibrillation.

Launching of the BEAT AF project bringing together 9 leading European clinical centres, including Liryc, to help reduce the enormous burden of atrial fibrillation, which affects more than 10 million people in Europe. This project has received a €6 million funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.

The overall objective of this randomized study is to demonstrate, within the framework of a 5-year project, that isolation of the pulmonary veins by Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) ablation is more effective than radio-frequency, the reference treatment to date.

As a reminder, PEF uses high-voltage electric microshocks to creates nanoscale pores in cell membranes, without collateral  damage to non-cardiac tissues.
The project will seek to demonstrate that PEF is faster, more effective and safer than radio-frequency.

For this purpose, two distinct randomized clinical trials will be conducted to provide evidence of the superiority of PEF for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and its potential efficacy for persistent atrial fibrillation.
These first two clinical trials will pave the way for further large-scale effectiveness trial to confirm and extend the results of BEAT AF, and finally establish PEF as the reference energy in international guidelines. This project has been selected for funding under the European Horizon 2020 program. Over the last 30 years, no new technology has reached this level of hope in this field.

[1] ground-BrEAking electroporation-based inTerventon for Atrial Fibrillation treatment.