A red anatomical heart with a yellow electrocardiogram line running through it, set against a shield with a magnifying glass showing an exclamation mark and a warning symbol, and the text 'TRACE-AF' below.

A Global Multinational Registry Tracking Rare Adverse Malignant Cardiac Events after Atrial Fibrillation Ablation

Traceafib@gmail.com

Sudden/unexplained death or cardiac arrest occurred in ~1 in 5,000 patients after atrial fibrillation ablation in the MANIFEST-US registry. Studying these rare events will require learning from the patient, clinical and procedural characteristics of the rare patients who suffer these early unexplained deaths.

TRACE-AF will be a retrospective patient-level registry of all patients who suffered sudden/unexplained death, generalized coronary vasospasm or malignant arrhythmia early after catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation or related arrhythmias.

Why TRACE-AF?

Comparison chart showing causes of death from manifest and MAUDE databases, with bars for various causes like cardiac arrest, sudden death, tamponade, stroke, and other cardiac and respiratory conditions.
Scatter plot comparing times of death after pulsed field ablation between MANIFEST-US cohort and MAUDE database. The x-axis shows days since the event, ranging from 0 to 30. The y-axis categorizes data sources into MANIFEST-US cohort and MAUDE database. Data points represent different types of death causes: purple triangles for sudden death or cardiac arrest, dark teal squares for sudden death or cardiac arrest, blue triangles for likely procedure-unrelated death, light blue triangles for likely procedure-related death, and brown circles for insufficient information. The plot illustrates the distribution across time for these categories.

*MANIFEST-US. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2026; 87 (2): 172-193. PMID: 41389071

Which patients are we interested in studying?

Any patient who has had a sudden or unexplained death within 30 days of a catheter ablation procedure for atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter (using any technology).

Any patient who experienced a malignant arrhythmia (including cardiac arrest) or delayed coronary spasm within 30 days of an atrial fibrillation ablation procedure and survived.

If you are unsure if a patient should be included, please err on the side of having a quick conversation with us to ascertain inclusion

What information are we interested in gathering?

  • Patient demographics

  • Medical and medication history

  • Procedure/anesthesia details

  • Peri-procedural imaging (e.g. TTE, TEE, ICE, CT, coronary angiogram, MRI, PET)

  • All rhythm monitoring (e.g. ECGs, Holters, telemetry, CIED [ICM, PPM, ICD])

  • Details of sudden death

  • Autopsy

Contact Us

Interested in working together? Please provide us your contact information and we will be in touch shortly.

Steering Committee

  • Julian Chun, MD (CardioVascular Center Bethanien)

  • Edward Gerstenfeld, MD (University of California, San Francisco

  • Melanie Gunawardene, MD (Asklepios Hospital St. Georg)

  • Pierre Jais, MD (University of Bordeaux)

  • Moussa Mansour, MD (Massachusetts General Hospital)

  • Francis Marchlinski, MD (University of Pennsylvania)

  • Devi Nair, MD (St. Bernards Heart & Vascular)

  • Andrea Natale, MD (Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute

  • Petr Neuzil, MD (Na Homolce Hospital)

  • Vivek Reddy, MD (Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital)

  • Prashanthan Sanders, MD (University of Adelaide)

  • Kazuhiro Satomi, MD (Tokyo Medical University Hospital)

  • Atul Verma, MD (McGill University)