Decision regret
Very few patients reported decision regret, and the mean decision regret
score was 12.0 (SD 28.0) out of 100 (Table 3 ). However, one
patient and most of the clinicians observed the challenges evaluating
regret without knowledge of the counterfactual, i.e., what might have
happened if they had waited and continued with medication management.
They also acknowledged the need to evaluate ablation outcomes over a
long window of time, as symptom and/or AF recurrence may happen months
or years post-ablation. Clinicians felt symptom resolution drove
perceptions that ablations were successful, especially when patients had
endured multiple trials of different medications to treat symptoms:“I think there’s a lot of relief; they’ve taken that last step.
You know, we’ve been building up to it for weeks or months, or maybe
even years in some cases; and they’re extremely relieved that the hurdle
is behind them… Are there people who feel symptoms again? For sure,
but it seems like it’s really—that’s the infrequent case; and the
frequent cases, they do feel better.” -Clinician 4.