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Risk for Stroke Should Be Reassessed In Patients With Atrial Fibrillation

     

     On December 28, 2018, Reuters interviewed Vice Superintendent Prof. Shih-Ann Chen and found out that approximately 16% of patients had a higher risk of stroke after a year of atrial fibrillation diagnosis. According to a study made by the atrial fibrillation care team at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, it was recommended that patients with low-risk atrial fibrillation should be annually reassessed of risk for stroke so as not to delay the use of anticoagulant drugs and cause stroke, resulting in lifelong regret.

     Results of the aforementioned study was recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and various news media outlets, including Reuters Health News, MDLinx, Science Codex, EurekAlert Science News, MedPage Today, CTCMD, have covered the results. It has aroused the attention of patients with atrial fibrillation and physicians alike globally.

     Prof. Shih-Ann Chen and his team has long been focusing on atrial fibrillation research. For 20 years, Prof. Chen is a leading pioneer in this area. In recent years, Dr. Tze-Fan Chao, who is a part of the atrial fibrillation care team, together with clinical trial expert Prof. Chern-En Chiang and database analysis expert Prof. Tzeng-Ji Chen, have collaborated together in a study of the risk for stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. A series of related articles were published in leading scientific medical journals.

     For patients with atrial fibrillation, a rigorous scale of 0 to 9 was developed to assess the risk for stroke. The higher the score, the higher the risk for stroke. Patients can calculate the odds of having a stroke every year based on their age and medical history.

     Atrial fibrillation is the most common type of arrhythmia in the clinical setting. There is a 1% prevalence rate of atrial fibrillation in Taiwan where approximately 230,000 patients with atrial fibrillation will have 3 to 5 times the risk of having a stroke. Therefore, stroke prevention is an important issue in the treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation.

 

(Source of the materials: Reuters)  

https://www.mdlinx.com/cardiology/top-medical-news/article/2019/01/03/7552345/

https://www.reuters.com/news/health