Impact of AF on Stroke Risk Eliminated With Multiple Risk Factors
Patients with five or more risk factors have the same stroke risk as patients with atrial fibrillation, according to research presented at the ESC Congress today by Dr. Christine Benn Christiansen from Denmark. The study included data on more than 4 million patients from Danish registries over a 10 year period.
Dr Benn Christiansen said: “We know that atrial fibrillation increases the risk of ischemic stroke. And in patients with atrial fibrillation or previous ischemic stroke, the risk of stroke increases with the number of risk factors. But until now, little attention has been paid to the association between stroke risk and risk factors in patients without prior stroke or atrial fibrillation. We wanted to explore that association and to quantify if stroke risk was of comparable size in patients with numerous risk factors.”
The study included 4,198,119 people aged 18 to 90 years with no history of stroke from nationwide Danish registries during 2000 to 2010. Of these, 161,651 (3.85%) had atrial fibrillation. The investigators compared the risk of stroke in patients with and without atrial fibrillation according to the number of risk factors.
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