Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) benefit from the long-term experience of Washington University cardiac surgeons in treating the heart arrhythmia. Washington University heart surgeon James Cox, MD, pioneered the Cox-Maze procedure — considered the gold standard of surgical AF treatment — at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in 1987. Since then, our cardiac surgeons have seen patients from around the globe with AF, and our published success rates with the procedure are the best worldwide.