Low AF Burden After CABG May Lessen Need for Anticoagulants

New findings question the need for oral anticoagulants for patients who develop atrial fibrillation (AF) after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), showing that while the arrythmia may be more frequent than previous research has estimated, the burden of episodes is negligible. 

The study, appearing in JAMA, showed that while nearly half of 198 patients who underwent CABG developed AF within a year of the surgery, the median burden of arrythmia events was well less than 1%.

Previous research has indicated that AF emerges in roughly 30% of patients who undergo CABG. Although the new results point to a higher rate of the arrhythmia, they suggest “post-CABG AF is often transient, characterized by predominantly brief, self-limiting episodes rather than sustained or progressive arrhythmia,” said Florian Herrmann, MD, of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at LMU University Hospital in Munich, Germany, who led the study.

Source: MEDspace