European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most prevalent cardiac arrhythmia accounting for one- third of all arrhythmia related hospitalizations. AF is major risk factor for stroke. Atrial fibrillation is hyper coagulable state in both paroxysmal and chronic atrial fibrillation, AF related stroke can be effectively prevented with oral anticoagulant therapy with vitamin K antagonist or non vitamin K antagonist. The present study was done with objective to detect prevalence of use of anti coagulants in treatment of non-valvular atrial fibrillation.
Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional observational type of study done at Narayan medical college and hospital Jamuhar, Sasaram, department of Medicine on 200 patients of non-valvular atrial fibrillation. Non-valvular atrial fibrillation patients were defined as atrial fibrillation without rheumatic valvular disease predominantly mitral stenosis or mechanical heart valves. Data regarding patients’ demographics, co-morbidities, diagnosis of AF were recorded; CHA2DS2_Vasc and HASBLED scores were calculated for each patient.
Results: In this study out of total 200 study subjects, 50 study subjects had CHA2DS2_Vasc score less than 1, whereas 150 study subjects have score more than 1. Out of 150 eligible patients only 15 were on anticoagulants.
Conclusions: In this study, it was found that the majority of patients with non-valvular AF were not anti-coagulated (90%), the type of anticoagulant most commonly used was vit K antagonist and most common risk factors for bleeding are hypertension (72%) followed by heart failure (36%).