Atrial fibrillation (AF) has become one of the diseases that seriously threaten people’s health in China. Studies show that there are about 9 million patients with AF in China, including more than 3 million patients with paroxysmal and isolated AF, which undoubtedly requires focused intervention. Paroxysmal and isolated atrial fibrillation can also be surgically ablated. Currently, the ablation methods of atrial fibrillation can be divided into two categories, one is catheterized interventional ablation technology, and the other is cardiac surgical ablation technology. For a long time, catheter ablation has been applied to patients with paroxysmal and isolated atrial fibrillation without serious organic heart disease, and surgical ablation has been applied to atrial fibrillation complicated by valvular disease, coronary artery disease, and congenital heart disease. However, with the development of minimally invasive cardiac surgical techniques, the surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation is breaking through the original scope of indications and extending to the field of isolated and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. Minimally invasive ablation technology adopts small incisions (Figure 1) and applies advanced ablation energy devices to perform epicardial ablation in the state of cardiac non-stop beating, which has the advantages of small injury to the patient, fast and accurate operation, fewer complications, and good therapeutic efficacy. The minimally invasive ablation techniques reported so far include Wolf Mini-maze ablation (Dry Radiofrequency), robot-assisted Irrigated Radiofrequency (IRF), microwave ablation, and High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) ablation. In terms of treatment concept, technical difficulty, clinical development time, number of cases treated, medium- and long-term efficacy, and the feasibility of popularization, the thoracoscopically-assisted Wolf Mini-maze ablation should be a representative technique for minimally invasive ablation of atrial fibrillation. The Wolf Mini-maze procedure was proposed by Dr. Randall Wolf of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 2002, and its main indications are isolated atrial fibrillation and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. The procedure has four main operative components, including extensive bilateral pulmonary vein isolation, linear ablation of the left atrium, partial denervation of the epicardium, and resection of the left auricle (Figure 2). The Wolf Mini-maze procedure for AF has the following advantages: 1) Bilateral pulmonary vein isolation, left atrial linear ablation, vagal ablation and other operations target the key pathogenesis of paroxysmal AF, and left auricle resection fundamentally eliminates the risk of thrombosis and embolism associated with AF. 2) It is less invasive and safer. 2.Surgical injury is small and safety is good. The procedure avoids the traditional heart surgery of sternotomy, and also avoids the radioactive damage caused by prolonged X-ray exposure during catheter ablation. During the procedure, the heart is in a normal beating state, and there is no need for cardiopulmonary bypass (extracorporeal circulation). The treatment is carried out under direct vision or monitoring, the ablation line is clear and accurate, and complications such as pulmonary vein stenosis can be avoided, and the chances of atrial tachycardia and other cardiac arrhythmias after the operation are extremely low. Short treatment and recovery time. The operation takes 1.5~4 hours, the tracheal tube can be removed in the operating room, and the patient can be awake again. The average hospitalization time after the operation is only 3~5 days, and the patients have almost no pain, and the incidence of surgical infection is extremely low. 4, good surgical efficacy. Internationally, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation is the main target of treatment, including strictly selected permanent atrial fibrillation, the overall cure rate of 6 months can reach 91.3%, and the patients did not take anti-arrhythmic drugs and anticoagulant drugs. The overall cure rate at 2 years after surgery was 80%, and no stroke occurred after surgery. In conclusion, the development of modern minimally invasive cardiac surgery has broken through the long-standing boundaries of surgical and catheter-based interventional ablation therapy for atrial fibrillation and expanded the scope of surgical treatment. This will change the single situation that catheter ablation is usually chosen for atrial fibrillation (especially isolated and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation), which is conducive to the reduction of recurrence rate, reablation rate, and the incidence of related complications, and will enable the treatment of atrial fibrillation to enter into a new stage of development.