Description:
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<jats:bold>Introduction:</jats:bold>
It has recently been shown that insertable cardiac monitors (ICM) reveal intermittent atrial fibrillation (AF) in up to 12.4% of patients with embolic stroke of undetermined source (ESUS) at 1 year follow-up. We sought to analyze the detection rate of intermittent AF with ICM in real-life clinical practice.
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<jats:bold>Methods:</jats:bold>
We prospectively studied consecutive patients with ESUS who received an ICM (NeuroLinq®) from 01/2014 to 06/2015). Baseline characteristics, treatment modalities and AF detection rate in the first year following ICM placement was assessed.
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<jats:bold>Results:</jats:bold>
We enrolled 75 ESUS patients (64% men, median age 61 years) who underwent ICM placement. Two patients were excluded due to diagnosis of prion disease and Churg-Strauss syndrome after placement of ICM. Sixty-nine of 73 (95%) patients complied with the eligibility criteria adopted by the CRYSTAL-AF study. Intermittent AF was detected in 14 (19%) patients with a median time from ICM placement to diagnosis of 57 (range, 312) days.
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<jats:bold>Conclusions:</jats:bold>
Our data suggest that the real-life detection rate of intermittent AF with ICM placed in patients with ESUS is comparable to that one observed under clinical trial conditions.
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