Diabetes and silent atrial fibrillation: A dangerous liaison?

Authors

  • Jassim Al Suwaidi Qatar Cardiovascular Research Center and Adult Cardiology, Heart Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar

Abstract

Diabetic patients have higher risk of stroke when compared to non-diabetics and in 25% of patients the cause of stroke is unknown. Marfella et al hypothesized that subclinical episodes of atrial fibrillation may be a common etiologic factor. 464 type-2 diabetic patients were compared to 240 health controls and were followed-up for 37 months. Silent cerebral infarcts at baseline were more common among diabetic patients with silent AF (176 patients) when compared to non-silent AF group (288 patients) (61% vs. 29%; p < 0.001) and was associated with higher number of stroke at follow-up.

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Published

2017-06-30

Issue

Vol. 2014 No. 4 (2014)

Section

Lessons from the trials

License

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.