Primary care physicians should be on the lookout for recurrent arrhythmias after a new study finds that among 1 in 3 patients, AF recurs after discharge from the hospital.
Please confirm that you would like to log out of Medscape. If you log out, you will be required to enter your username and password the next time you visit."Atrial fibrillation is very common in patients for the very first time in their life when they're sick and in the hospital," said William F. McIntyre, MD, PhD, a cardiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, who led the study.
McIntyre and colleagues followed 139 patients at three medical centers in Ontario who experienced new-onset AF during their hospital stay, along with an equal number of patients who had no history of AF and who served as controls. The research team used a Holter monitor to record study participants' heart rhythm for 14 days to detect incident AF at 1 and 6 months after discharge. They also followed up with periodic phone calls for up to 12 months.
"This study has important implications for management of patients who have a first presentation of AF that is concurrent with a reversible physiologic stressor," the authors write."An AF recurrence risk of 33.1% at 1 year is neither low enough to conclude that transient new-onset AF in the setting of another illness is benign nor high enough that all such transient new-onset AF can be assumed to be paroxysmal AF.
The study participants already have chronic health conditions that bring them into regular contact with their family physician. This gives primary care physicians a golden opportunity to be on lookout and to recommend care from a cardiologist at the appropriate time if it becomes necessary, he said.
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