MAZE Operations

Patients indicated for heart operations, if they also have the associated disease of atrial fibrillation, are treated surgically together with the heart operation, the so called MAZE operation. It is a surgical procedure of the division of the heart atriums to individual sections, the creation of a MAZE – or a labyrinth by means of radiofrequency energy or by the effect of cold – by a cryo-probe.

We have newly introduced a less invasive procedure for patients with only the disease of atrium fibrillation without associated heart disease.
It is an endoscopic MAZE operation. Until the present, atrium fibrillation has been treated as an additional surgery to other heart diseases by the access from sternotomy. An endoscopically performed MAZE surgical performance is a low invasive operation without sternotomy carried out on a beating heart without extracorporeal circulation. Endoscopic MAZE operations have already been routinely performed in several European centres and in the U.S.A. For this type of surgical performances, patients with a persistent or permanent atrium fibrillation are indicated, particularly patients after an unsuccessful catheter ablation or patients with a large left atrium (usually > 50mm), where results of catheter ablation are always very uncertain. As the previous procedures of treatment of atrium fibrillation have not been fully satisfactory and catheter ablations are surgical performances lasting for many hours with a large exposition to X-ray radiation, we aim to offer an alternative procedure we believe is beneficial for our patients.