Heart Team/MAM 2016: Moving A-Fib Care to a New Level
Totally historic! The MAM 2016 symposium set important goals for shaping the future of A-Fib care and showed how the emphasis on a ‘Heart Team’ is moving the field of patient A-Fib care to a new level.
This first Multidisciplinary Arrhythmia Meeting (MAM) was held in Zurich, Switzerland Sept 15-16, 2016 and advocated for a team approach―EPs, Surgeons, and other healthcare professionals working together to better help the A-Fib patient.
Leading cardiologists and surgeons explained why they favored the hybrid surgery/ablation referred to by several terms: “hybrid simultaneous,” or “hybrid staged,” or “multidisciplinary sequential approaches”.


Interactive Hands-On Workshops and Live Surgery
MAM 2016 featured interactive workshops with hands-on experiences in EP ablation, Surgical Ablation, and Mechanical Exclusion of the Left Atrial Appendage (LAA). Included were working examples of clinicians, electrophysiologists and surgeons teaming up to better help A-Fib patients.


Observing via a live video feed, attendees watched Dr. Stefano Benussi and his colleagues perform a surgery of an A-Fib patient showing both the left side and right side approaches. (The patient had a huge amount of fat which first had to be cut away before the pericardium sac could be reached and cut into in order to access the heart and pulmonary veins.)
MAM 2016 Program and Faculty


The Multidisciplinary Arrhythmia Meeting was the brain child of the Course Director Dr. Stefano Benussi of the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. Course Co-Directors were Harry Crijins of Maastricht, the Netherlands and Firat Duru of Zurich, Switzerland.
The Program Committee and Scientific Faculty making presentations included 54 distinguished doctors from around the world including the famed inventor of the original Cox Maze operation, James L. Cox of Denver, USA. (The Cox Maze operation was the first treatment to make patients A-Fib free.)
A partial list of MAM 2016 participating doctors and countries:


• Manuel Castella, Barcelona, Spain
• Paolo Della Bella, Alberto Pozzoli, Claudio Tondo, Milan, Italy
• Karl Heinz Kuck, Andreas Metzner, Hamburg, Germany
• Bart van Putte, Utrecht, The Netherlands
• Malcolm Dalrymple-Hay, Guy Haywood, Plymouth, UK
• Joris Ector, Mark La Meir, Laurent Pison, Brussels, Belgium
• Hans Kottkamp, Diana Reser and many more from Zurich, Switzerland
• Gunther Laufer, Vienna, Austria
• Randal Lee, Bing Liem, Steve S. Ryan, California, USA
• Ju Mei, Shanghai, China
• Peter Mueller, Dipen Shah, Geneva, Switzerland
• Amiran Revishvili, Moscow, Russia
• Timo Weimar, Stuttgart, Germany
• Michael Zembata, Zabrze, Poland
Additional presenting doctors will be identified along with summaries of their individual presentations.
My presentation summaries will follow.
Return to Reports of A-Fib Medical Symposiums & Conferences
If you find any errors on this page, email us. ♥ Last updated: Monday, October 3, 2016