Impact of Return to Sinus Rhythm on Quality of Life in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation

Improving quality of life in AF is a clinical issue in the management of this disease. The choice of therapeutic strategy; rhythm or rate control would influence the parameters of quality of life assessment. The aim of our study was to describe the impact of maintaining sinus rhythm after cardioversion on the quality of life of patients followed for AF.To do this we conducted a prospective descriptive study including 24 patients followed for paroxysmal, persistent and prolonged persistent AF. Quality of life was assessed by two scores (AFEQT, SF-36) validated for atrial fibrillation. The average age of our population was 53.3 years. Half of our sample had no underlying heart disease. We observed an improvement in quality of life in patients who maintained sinus rhythm. A contradictory result was observed in patients who had a recurrence of the arrhythmia. We also found that age, treatments and comorbidities influenced the quality of life of patients followed for AF. The results found in our study are consistent with the literature; the differences found are probably related to the size of our random sample and the number of scales used to assess quality of life. The use of quality of life scores could be a key issue for the follow-up of these patients in order to integrate a global management approach.