Introduction
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is one of the most important causes of embolic phenomenon. Its prevalence rises with age, from 0.5% to 8% after the age of eighty. In the last two decades great effort has been invested in developing new strategies : medical and mechanical for the prevention of AF.
Hypertension and coronary heart disease have been accepted as the most leading disorders related to AF ,however obesity and sleep apnea syndrome are considered independent risk factors for AF, as established in the literature during the last decade.
Purpose
To raise awareness to the linkage between obesity, sleep apnea and both emergence and repetition of this arrhythmia.
Methods and Materials
We have established a pilot study and examined all files of patients who were admitted to our department last year with the diagnosis of AF and either obesity or sleep apnea. Obesity was determine by BMI> 30 and sleep apnea diagnosis was determine using polysomnography.
Forty-three out of 374 (12%) obese pts with the mean age of 65 years(range 40-79); and 8 /37( 22%) pts with sleep apnea syndrome had AF and needed electrical or pharmacological therapy. Our preliminary data related to these risk factors provided higher results than the published data.
Conclusions
Our preliminary data should be confirmed by a larger studies, representing a larger scale of pts suffering from AF. This data represent one of the epidemics of our century; obesity, and its sequels. It is suggested that effort should be extended towards its prevention. Similarly, among unresponsive pts ether bariatric surgery, or CPAP can be suggested.
