When I began to research about AF, I read that the thinking in the medical field was that rate control and rhythm control was thought to have offered good results. Few patients returned, so they thought they had the answers. Then, somebody thought to do a follow-up using records and tombstone records...literally, cross-referencing between obituaries and those whose records were public insofar as their health was concerned. The result was that, their apparently infrequent return visits to their GPs notwithstanding, most patients diagnosed with AF 30 years ago and sent away with drugs were not doing well after all. They were dead.

Ablations are relatively new compared to, say therapies for diabetes, or bypass surgery. It's still a young procedure. In time, I am quite certain that the data will show a marked longevity difference, even if only five or six years. Who would pass those years up? Who would pass up a single year if it were symptom-free (assuming longevity was moot?) For some of us, living with AF makes us feel lousy, or extremely uneasy and anxious. If a day were lost to a catheter ablation, and you could be guaranteed of no AF for a whole 365 days when your burden would otherwise be something like 5-10%, I think many of us would want it.

The other thing is that, while a successful ablation (one full year free of AF) might help one to live longer, it's other co-component is its improvement in quality of life. As with so much of modern medicine, it is to treat symptoms since some symptoms rob us of the desire to continue living.

Lastly, I was always worried about the problem of remodeling, mitral valve prolapse, enlargement of the left atrium, and general heart failure, all possible and decidedly probably according to all the recent literature if one spends a great deal of time, or permanently, in AF. A successful ablation will stop that process. I don't see how it could help but to increase longevity.