{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020833333333333332, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005952380952380952, 'mean_word_length': 5.731895223420647, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Correcting Arrhythmias: Interventional and Surgical Ablation Therapy.

Prof. Mohr has an outstanding sense of discovering exceptionally talented stallions. As soon as hewould discover such talent, only a short period of time would pass before he actively stimulated inspiration among his team to integrate this talent. Soon after, a highly motivated and efficient team was created. Working day and night, while demonstrating utmost ambition to pursue innovation, this teamwould then passionately pursue their vision to bring this stallion through the finishing line first. This particular gift of Prof. Mohr explains how various visions at the Leipzig Heart Center have been transformed from just being an initial idea into novel treatment concepts, which were established in clinical practice worldwide. The evolution of rhythm surgery is a very good example for Prof. Mohr’s exceptional gift and its impact on current standards and treatment approaches in cardiac surgery. His friendship with James Cox had given him insights into the effective surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation. In the beginning of the 1990s, Cox had developed the maze operation. Back then, Cox and “his” cardiologist performed intraoperative epicardial electrical mappings and concluded from their findings that biatrial fragmentation by defined transmural cutting lines could treat atrial fibrillation. This surgery is highly effective, but at the same time also highly invasive. The procedure originally required establishing cardiopulmonary bypass as well as additional cross-clamping times of 60 minutes. Long-term follow-up over meanwhile 20 years showed success rates of more than 80% of the patients retaining sinus rhythm. In several centers, especially in the United States, this procedure is being performed as a “standalone” procedure and the good results have proven to be reproducible using current follow-up guidelines. Toward the end of the 1990s, the development of percutaneous catheter ablations was only in its early beginnings. Nevertheless, successful ablation lines were neither transmural nor linear. These were also the years when minimally invasive mitral valve and later tricuspid valve surgery were successfully introduced into clinical practice at the Leipzig Heart Center. The early insights of Prof. Mohr’s friend Randy Chitwood were further developed, modified, and rapidly established in clinical practice there. Prof. Mohr subsequently introduced minimally invasive surgery for the treatment of atrioventricular valves in Europe and, later on, the world.1 Soon after minimally invasive valve surgery was clinically established it received recognition from rhythm specialists, ultimately leading to an exchange of ideas regarding the surgical treatment of “stand-alone” atrial fibrillationwith an interdisciplinary approach. Gerd Hindricks and Hans Kottkamp, who had already developed their ideas to treat atrial fibrillation in Mannheim with Prof. Borggrefe, were keen on performing minimally invasive intraoperative endocardial ablations using high-frequency energies. Following interdisciplinary planning of the operative setting, the first controlled prospective study Intraoperative Radiofrequency Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation (IRAAF) was designed at the Heart Center Leipzig in close collaboration between cardiac surgeons and cardiologists. A total of 130 patients with atrial fibrillation were successfully treated with an outstanding result of 90% sinus rhythm at 1-year follow-up.2 Unfortunately, this novel procedure was associated with several new unexpected complications. Three patients suffered from esophageal perforations with esophagoaswell as broncho-atrialfistulae.3 Early diagnosis of this complication was challenging, as patients complained of nonspecific symptoms beginning usually a week after the ablation procedure. These included fever, chills, strokes, and signs of mediastinitis. Major concerns were expressed, and after identification of the third perforation in our cohort, we discontinued this treatment strategy and began investigating its pathomechanism in depth.4–6Wetested all alternative energy sources which created transmural linear endoand epicardial scars in animal models. The aforementioned complication could be reproducedwhen using unipolar dry highfrequency ablation (►Fig. 1). Furthermore, we were able to