Management of Atrial Fibrillation

THE treatment of atrial fibrillation and the prevention of its complications are primarily pharmacologic problems. Treatment has two principal objectives. One is to use antiarrhythmic therapy to relieve symptoms; the other is to use prophylactic therapy to reduce the risk of stroke that accompanies atrial fibrillation. In planning the management of atrial fibrillation, it is useful to consider patients who are permanently in atrial fibrillation as having chronic atrial fibrillation and patients who have sinus rhythm punctuated by attacks of fibrillation as having paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. The two forms overlap, however, because many patients with chronic atrial fibrillation first present . . .