Awareness and treatment of atrial fibrillation in older adults: the present and the future.
ARTICLE

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the commonest cardiac arrhythmia, with an increasing prevalence with age. However, AF is often asymptomatic and/or intermittent, and very often, its ‘how hard one looks’ to find AF particularly amongst high-risk groups. Indeed, newly developed AF may be present in 30% of patients with cardiovascular risk factors at 1 year, and if undiagnosed, this may sadly result in the first presentation (or confirmed diagnosis) of AF in the context of a devastating stroke.1

In this issue of QJM , Frewen et al. describe the demographics of the Irish population with AF in a nationally representative sample aged >50, from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) cohort. Consistent with other studies, they found that the overall prevalence of AF was 3%, being higher in men overall and with advancing age. Although, 68% had a high risk of …