EDUCATION IN HEART
Electrophysiology
Management of atrial fibrillation
Haemostasis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Unit, University Department of Medicine, City Hospital, Birmingham, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Gregory Y H Lip
Haemostasis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Unit, University Department of Medicine, City Hospital, Birmingham B18 7QH, UK; g.y.h.lip@bham.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a supraventricular tachyarrhythmia characterised by uncoordinated atria activation with consequent deterioration of atrial mechanical function. It is the most common arrhythmia encountered in the clinical practice of the developed countries,1w1 and accounts for 1% of all National Health Service expenditure in the United Kingdom.w2
The prevalence and incidence of AF increases with advancing age, affecting approximately 5% of individuals older than 65 years and nearly 10% of those aged older than 80 years.2 So common is this problem that it is expected that more than five million Americans will be living with AF by the year 2050.w1 AF also coexists with common cardiovascular conditions, such as hypertension, heart failure, coronary artery disease and diabetes mellitus, and with an increasingly older general population, AF (and its co-morbidities) will become an increasing health care burden.2w3 w4 Indeed, hospitalisation rates for AF have increased by 2–3 fold.w4 In the
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Blanc, J. J., Almendral, J., Brignole, M., Fatemi, M., Gjesdal, K., Gonzalez-Torrecilla, E., Kulakowski, P., Lip, G. Y.H., Shah, D., Wolpert, C., on behalf of the Scientific Initiatives Committee,
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