What are the incidence, risk factors, and outcomes of stressor-associated atrial fibrillation in primary care patients?
Stressor-associated AF is common and carries similar risks to typical AF, yet is undertreated with oral anticoagulants, highlighting a significant gap in clinical management.
Among >30 000 primary care patients with adjudicated AF events, nearly one-third of incident AF cases were stressor associated. Despite similar risk factor profiles and comparably high rates of adverse outcomes, oral anticoagulant initiation is lower when AF is stressor associated. Future work is needed to define optimal approaches to prevention, surveillance, and management of stressor-associated AF.
Haimovich et al. (2025) studied this question.