How very wet this water is!

We would like to thank Drs Jacques and Philippon for their comments about our recent article1 and for their personal contribution to the ongoing debate about surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients undergoing primary mitral valve surgery. We agree with these authors that the Cox work represents a milestone in the arrhythmias surgery and that Cox Maze III or IV procedure, the newest iteration using energy sources instead of incisions, remain the recognized gold standard for the surgical ablation of AF. Nonetheless, standardization of these procedures …

[1]  H. Crijns,et al.  Surgical ablation in patients undergoing mitral valve surgery: impact of lesion set and surgical techniques on long-term success. , 2016, Europace : European pacing, arrhythmias, and cardiac electrophysiology : journal of the working groups on cardiac pacing, arrhythmias, and cardiac cellular electrophysiology of the European Society of Cardiology.

[2]  N. Geller,et al.  Surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation during mitral-valve surgery. , 2015, The New England journal of medicine.

[3]  O. Alfieri,et al.  Complete left atrial ablation with bipolar radiofrequency. , 2008, European journal of cardio-thoracic surgery : official journal of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery.

[4]  David O. Martin,et al.  Atrial arrhythmias after surgical maze: findings during catheter ablation. , 2006, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[5]  K. Peels,et al.  Cardiogenic shock due to coronary narrowings one day after a MAZE III procedure. , 1999, The Annals of thoracic surgery.