Here is part of a communication from Dr James Cox to the A-fibcures bulletin board on June 26, 2008:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/A-fibcures/message/3511

I've never heard of Dr. Steinberg so I don't know what he is doing.
However, I've visited Andy Kiser in Pinehurst and accompanied him on a
case. In addition, he spent the entire day last Saturday sitting here
in my study in Naples discussing his procedure and my thoughts on it.
Andy is a very nice young man who is trying his best to help solve
the problem. However, as I told him, I have several problems with
what he is doing. First, however, I should say that his SURGICAL
APPROACH through the diaphragm is a new concept that I find very
clever and promising and I have told him that. After that, however,
the value of his procedure drops rather quickly in my opinion. Here
are the problems that I have with it:
1. He uses Unipolar RF which is one of the least reliable energy
sources when applied from outside the heart
2. His lesion pattern in the left atrium is incomplete because he
ignores the lesion on the coronary sinus. That will give him a
built-in 10-20% failure rate even if he does everything else perfectly.
3. Deleting the coronary sinus lesion causes a 10-20% incidence of
"atypical left atrial flutter" postop. Unfortunately, Andy does not
have the quality of cardiology and electrophysiology support in his
small hospital to even recognize this complication should it occur.
In fact, I had been told before the case I witnessed that they had
"never seen it in a single patient". Well, it occurred in the patient
that I was there for and everyone in the room was clapping and
shouting because they thought the patient had converted during the
procedure from AF to normal sinus rhythm but she had actually
converted from AF to atypical atrial flutter! Nobody in the room
recognized it and I had to explain what it was to them. This raises
the question of how many patients might have had the same problem
before but just went undiagnosed because nobody there was versed
enough in electrophysiology to recognize it. His one-year success
rate is 74% but that is without being able to recognize atypical left
atrial flutter.
4. His right-sided lesions are entirely arbitrary, being based on no
experimental or clinical evaluation at all. In addition, they make no
sense to me, nor does the lesion from the right inferior pulmonary
vein to the inferior vena cava. I pointed this out to Andy and showed
him how he could just as easily put the CORRECT right atrial lesions
on through his small incision. I'm not sure what he plans to do in
the future.
5. Nothing is done to the left atrial appendage. This is a mistake
for any AF surgical procedure because the LA appendage is where the
clots form that are responsible for strokes associated with AF. In 20
years of followup, we have had one minor stroke in over 500 patients.
The only explanation for that amazing result is that we removed or
ligated every single LA appendage.