Why the study?
The study was conducted to describe patient characteristics, treatment patterns, and stroke risks for patients with newly diagnosed AF in China.
Do antithrombotic medications reduce the risk of stroke in patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in China?
Do antithrombotic medications reduce the risk of stroke in patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in China?
Antithrombotic medications, particularly oral anticoagulants, are significantly underutilized in Chinese patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation, despite being associated with a 60% reduction in stroke risk.
May encourage antithrombotic use in under-treated Chinese AF; leaves open need for randomized confirmation.
Aim: To describe patient characteristics, treatment patterns and stroke risks for patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation (AF) in China. Patients & methods: Patients with AF were identified from an electronic medical record database in China (n = 22,535). Results: Less than half of patients (n = 9971; 44.2%) received antithrombotic medications following AF diagnosis; of these patients, 93.7% received anticoagulants and 71.3% received antiplatelets. Only 27.6% of patients received oral anticoagulants. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard model analysis found that patients treated with antithrombotic medications had a significantly lower risk of stroke compared with patients who were not treated (hazard ratio: 0.4; 95% CI: 0.37–0.43). Conclusion: The results suggest that antithrombotic medications, especially oral anticoagulants, are underused in China.
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Wang et al. (2022) studied this question.
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