The Afib Report

There is now general consensus that atrial fibrillation is an epidemic. While huge and costly efforts are being made to find new drugs to control it, and new ablation and surgical techniques to eliminate it, I am not aware of any serious effort being expended to finding out what is causing the epidemic. To a solution-oriented and practical-minded chemical engineer like myself, this makes no sense at all, but presumably it makes perfect sense to governments, the medical fraternity, and the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, in this issue we report on an effort made by researchers at the Mayo Clinic to determine risk factors for developing atrial fibrillation. By comparing the status of 12 variables vs. incidence of AF in a group of 14,546 individuals between the ages of 45 and 64 years, the researchers were able to develop a score for predicting the risk of developing AF over the next 10 years. The major risk factors were: • Age 60 to 64 years 8 points • Early coronary artery disease (age 45 to 50 years) 5 points • Age 55 to 60 years 4 points • Height of 173 cm (5 ft 8 in) or greater 4 points • Left ventricular hypertrophy and white race 4 points • Early diabetes (between 45 and 55 years) 4 points