Background: Heart failure (HF) and atrial fibrillation (AF) share several risk factors including coronary artery disease, hypertension, smoking, obesity, diabetes, and renal disease, as well as common pathophysiologic pathway involving activation of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system, maladaptive atrial remodeling and subsequent impaired conduction system. Some studies have supported the role of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) [...]

Background: Atrial fibrillation leads to increased risk of systemic embolism (SE) and stroke. To decrease the occurrence of stroke/SE, anticoagulation is routinely prescribed. Recently, non-vitamin K anticoagulants like apixaban and rivaroxaban have become more popular and are preferred over warfarin. We here compare the efficacy and safety of apixaban with warfarin. Methods: Eligible participants were [...]

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a very common condition which usually requires anticoagulation (AC). There are very clear indications of when to initiate AC but recommendations regarding bridging during elective surgery are not very clear. We here tried to answer this important question by calculating the risk of bleeding and stroke/systemic embolism (SE). Methods: We [...]

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AFIB) is the most common recognized arrhythmia in the United States. Currently affecting more than 6 million people, this number is expected to double by 2050. Along with increased costs ($26 billion/year), it is associated with a 5-fold risk for stroke and 2-fold risk for all-cause mortality, independent of comorbid conditions. In [...]

Background: The annual incidence of sepsis is about 1.7 million in the United States and about 270,000 Americans die as a result of sepsis each year. Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia seen in hospitalized patients and has shown to unfavorably alter the cardiovascular hemodynamics in patients admitted with sepsis. However there are only [...]

Case Presentation: 68-year-old man presented during summer with two weeks of weakness and shortness of breath. He had associated chills, myalgia, arthralgia, blurry vision, dry mouth, dizziness, dry cough, and dysuria. On initial presentation, he had new-onset atrial fibrillation (AFib) with rapid ventricular response and hypotension prompting admission to intensive care. After treatment with amiodarone [...]

Case Presentation: A 62-year-old male with a history of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation presented with hypotension and 2 week history of chest pain after an ablation with pulmonary vein isolation. Transthoracic echocardiography demonstrated a pericardial effusion. Pericardial fluid sampling revealed an elevated leukocyte count of 130,000 cells per cubic millimeter and culture grew rare strep mitis/oralis [...]

Case Presentation: We present a case of a 42-year-old male with a past medical history of atrial fibrilation (AF) on anti-coagulation (AC) who underwent left atrial radio-frequency ablation (RFA) and pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) and presented with confusion and bilateral upper and lower extremity weakness.The patient tolerated the procedure but complained of difficulty swallowing afterwards. [...]