IJCS | Volume 31, Nº6, November / December 2018

561 1. Madeira M,Teixeira R, Reis L Dinis P, Paiva L, Botelho A, et al. Does percutaneous left atrial appendage closure affect left atrial performance. Int J Cardiovasc Sci. 2018; 31(6): 569-577. 2. Malavasi A, Ganau A, Serra G, Satta A, Cassisa L, Rappelli A. Study on the medium normalized velocity of circumferential lengthening of the fiber using ultrasound. II. Use of the construction of left-ventricle performance curves. Arch Sci Med (Torino). 1976;133(4):301-7. 3. Gould KL, Kennedy JW, Frimer M, Pollack GH, Dodge HT.Analysis of wall dynamics and directional components of left ventricular contraction in man. Am J Cardiol. 1976; 38(3):322-31. 4. Inman T. Foundation for a new theory and practice of medicine. Philadelphia:John Churchill; 1860. apud Sokol DK. “First do no harm” revisited. BMJ 2013;347:f6426. 5. Lofrano-Alves MS, Moleta DB, Machado CCS, Azevedo DFC, Azevedo RP, Bocchi EA, Mathias Jr W. STRAIN-DHF Study (Speckle Tracking Adds Information in Decompensated Failure): left atrial strain predicts short-term outcome in patients with acute decompensated heart failure. In: Euroecho-imaging, 2017,Lisboa. Eur Heart J Cardiovasc Imaging.2017;18:p.iii379-iii414. 6. Lofrano-Alves MS, Issa VS, Biselli B, Chizzola P, Ayub-Ferreira SM, Bocchi EA. Control of sinus tachycardia as an additional therapy in patients with decompensated heart failure (CONSTATHE-DHF): A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. J Heart Lung Transplant. 2016;35(10):1260-4. 7. Malagoli A, Rossi L, Bursi F, Zanni A, Sticozzi C, Piepoli MF, et al. Left Atrial Function Predicts Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Chronic Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction. J Am Soc Echocardiogr. 2018 Oct 10. pii: S0894-7317(18)30469-3. References Mathias Junior To occlude or not to occlude.That is the question Int J Cardiovasc Sci. 2018;31(6)560-561 Editorial This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License Therefore, the study by Madeira et al. adds to the current literature, but we must understand that their results are limited to the studied population, i.e., a group of subjects with severe atrial dysfunction, in whom no significant worsening is expected. Moreover, these results suggest, at best, what can be expected to occur at short term (3 months), in elderly patients with well-preserved left ventricular function. Nevertheless, this opens the possibility of studying the effect of percutaneous LAA on LA function in younger subjects with many forms of cardiac diseases.