Effect of Widespread Sleep Apnea Screening on Progression of Atrial Fibrillation
Section snippets
Methods
Beginning in March 2018, patients referred to the Arrhythmia Clinic for management of AF were referred for SA evaluation. To facilitate widespread SA screening, a clinical pathway was developed in conjunction with Sleep Medicine. This included the creation of an order set for sleep testing in the electronic medical record and automatic notification of referrals and results to select individuals within Sleep Medicine and Electrophysiology. Entry of this order set would alert a designated
Results
From March 2018 to April 2020, 251 of 321 patients with AF referred for SA evaluation successfully completed SA testing. Of these, 212 had complete follow-up information, and 27 of these 212 patients had inconclusive results on HST and were excluded from the final analysis. Thus, our final cohort included 185 patients with AF with conclusive SA testing and complete follow-up information (Figure 1).
Of the 185 patients, 93% had some form of SA, 49% had OSA primarily, and 42% had mixed apnea. Only
Discussion
In this study, we found an exceedingly high prevalence of SA in an unselected population of patients with AF who underwent SA screening as part of a general management strategy for AF. Overall, 93% of patients in our cohort had some form of SA. Traaen et al20 reported a prevalence of >80% in their cohort of patients with AF. A meta-analysis found a pooled prevalence of 78%, with individual prevalence ranging from 46% to 92%.3 Kadhim et al3 characterized the prevalence of sleep-disordered
Disclosures
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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