What are the risks of catheter ablation for Atrial Fibrillation

Any procedure on the heart carries risks, so it's very important to weigh this up when you're discussing whether you should have your ablation procedure. The risks are small but do include bleeding either around the heart or in the leg at 1%, surgery, anything requiring surgery at around 0.2%, anything leading to death around 0.1%, the risk of stroke is deemed around 0.4-0.5%. So these are roughly some of the risks involved in having an ablation procedure. There are other risks as well as damage to heart, nerves or vessels around the heart which often recover at around 0.5%. Your cardiologist who will do this would be very experienced in doing ablation procedures and this would be a very common procedure for them but nevertheless any procedure carries those risks.