drug therapy in atrial fibrillation management: where do we stand in 2010?

atrial fibrillation (af) is a commonly encountered arrhythmia in our daily practice. every year a huge bulk of data is published about different management strategies, new antiarrhythmic drugs, anticoagulation protocols and ablation procedures in these patients. in this review article, we discuss different management strategies and new antiarrhythmic drugs as well as those commonly used. we will also have a brief look at anticoagulation in af. we try to introduce the most recent publications in this field and we think that this review article may not only give information about the current state of antiarrhythmic therapy of af, it may also show some progresses that we may anticipate in the near future. new drugs are promising in the management of af because of better safety profile and also acceptable efficacy.   a comparison between the catheter ablation procedure and antiarrhythmic therapy is beyond the scope of this article.