Role of cardiovascular implantable electronic devices in delivering individualized disease-guided management of patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation and high bleeding risk

AbstractBackground: Many patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) with high risk for thromboembolic stroke and bleeding may not wish to continue long-term oral anticoagulants (OACs) to avoid bleeding complications. We aimed to investigate whether AF burden assessment by cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) would allow an individualised disease-guided approach for safe withdrawal of long-term OAC in high-risk patients.Methods and results: We studied 145 patients (age 77.6 ± 10.6 years; 49.7% females) with NVAF, CHA2DS2-VASc score ≥2, HAS-BLED score ≥3, in whom CIEDs were implanted. These patients wished to stay off long-term OAC based on their previous adverse bleeding event/s or due to similar events witnessed in the family or friend circle. These patients were grouped into ‘low AF burden’ [n = 121 (83%)], or ‘high AF burden’ [n = 24 (17%)] defined as  24 hours cumulatively in 30 consecutive days respectively, and followed for 51.2 ± 29.8 months. All patients wit...