The epidemiological burden of atrial fibrillation: a challenge for clinicians and health care systemsThe opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Editors of the European Heart Journal or of the European Society of Cardiology.
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/eurheartj/ehi651
ISSN1522-9645
AutoresGiuseppe Boriani, Igor Diemberger, Cristian Martignani, Mauro Biffi, Angelo Branzi,
Tópico(s)Cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias
ResumoThis editorial refers to ‘Prevalence, incidence and lifetime risk of atrial fibrillation: the Rotterdam study’† by Heeringa et al., on page 949 There is increasing awareness that management of atrial fibrillation (AF) and its complications (particularly strokes) constitutes an important burden for health care systems and a major clinical challenge. AF is the most common sustained arrhythmia, and detailed knowledge of its epidemiology is important both for provision of adequate care and for resource allocation. Available epidemiological studies have mainly focused on prevalence of AF. Important frequency variations have been recorded, often linked to different detection procedures.1 Most of what we know about the incidence of AF in the general population comes from two large North American studies and a single study from Britain mostly regarding hospitalized patients.1 Thus, the new population-based cohort study by Herringa et al. 2 on the epidemiological profile of AF in Rotterdam is highly relevant. This work, based on almost 8000 inhabitants of (a suburb of) Rotterdam aged at least 55 years at enrollment, provides a valuable picture of the age-specific prevalence and incidence of AF, as well as the lifetime risk of developing this clinically challenging arrhythmia. The Rotterdam study suggests that sex–age-specific incidence increases progressively before peaking at around 80 years. This result fits well with the main available data on incidence of AF, which are summarized in Figure 1 . The high reported lifetime risk of developing AF (around … *Corresponding author. Tel: +39 0 513 49858; fax: +39 0 513 44859. E-mail address : cardio1{at}med.unibo.it
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