Multidisciplinary Clinic Offers a New Model for Complex AFib Care

When patients with refractory AFib fall into a treatment gap, a collaborative new multidisciplinary clinic from Keck Medicine of USC gives them a way out.

By
November 3, 2026
5 min

Keck Medicine of USC

Objective:

The article examines the objective, findings, and clinical context described in Multidisciplinary Clinic Offers a New Model for Complex AFib Care.

Approach:

Team-based evaluation: Patients meet with a cardiac electrophysiologist, cardiac surgeon, and nurse practitioner in one visit to review AFib risk factors, prior treatments, cardiac findings, and other comorbidities.
Treatment options: Care plans may include endocardial treatment, minimally invasive surgical procedures such as convergent maze or totally thoracoscopic maze with left atrial appendage exclusion, or a combination.
Follow-up care: The clinic describes postsurgical electrophysiologic evaluation, long-term rhythm monitoring, risk-factor modification, and management of comorbidities.

Key Findings:

The article reports that some patients with longstanding persistent AFib remain difficult to treat with endocardial techniques alone.
It attributes this difficulty in part to fibrosis and scarring that can support self-sustaining electrical loops.
The clinic combines surgical and electrophysiologic expertise and offers hybrid treatment options.
Potentially appropriate patients include those with longstanding persistent AFib, multiple unsuccessful catheter ablations, advanced heart failure, or a need for concurrent cardiac procedures.

Interpretation:

The article presents the clinic as a coordinated care model intended to address a treatment gap for selected patients with complex AFib.

Limitations:

The context is a clinic description and does not provide study methods, patient outcomes, or comparative data.
The article does not quantify the effectiveness or risks of the clinic’s procedures.