Dear Sir,
In December, Dr Stavrakis and Dr Po published the excellent article “Ganglionated Plexi Ablation: Physiology and Clinical Applications” in AER.1 Despite the outstanding quality, unfortunately the article presents a very small fault.
The authors state that autonomic ablation for the treatment of bradyarrhythmias was proposed by Yao. GP ablation for vasovagal syncope was first introduced by Yao et al., who reported their initial experience on 10 patients with highly symptomatic vasovagal syncope.
In fact, the ablation of bradyarrhythmias was created, proposed and patented by us, 7 years before, having been developed in the 1990s. The first series of 21 patients was published in 2005 in PACE and was patented in the US in 2005 as well (US 2011 0098.699A1 Patent Application Publication Pub. No.: US 2011/0098.699 A1, JC Pachon Mateos, EI Pachon Mateos).
We also developed and patented a system for strict control of vagal denervation for the treatment of bradyarrhythmias.
Considering the high quality and notability of the authors, the article is highly attractive so it is very important to correct this flaw. Relevant publications by our group will provide further information.2,3