Objective: Identifying the symptoms associated with an acute episode of paroxysmal AF that required hospitalization and their correlations with clinical, ECG and echocardiographic data.
Methods: Retrospective study of 104 patients hospita-lized for an paroxysmal AF episode in the Cardiology Department of the „St. Pantelimon” Emergency Hospi-tal, over a 1-year and 2 months period, from 23.04.2015 to 22.06.2016. Different data were collected and evalu-ated (e.g. clinical and anamnesis) by review of records. Symptoms have been correlated with these.
Results: We included 104 patients with a median age of 70.3 years. 68% were female. Congestive heart fai-lure (CHF) was the most common pre-existing cardi-ovascular disease (50%), followed by coronary artery disease (CAD) (37.5%) and stroke (11.5%). The domi-nant symptoms were palpitations (65.38%), dyspnea (56.73%) and angina (44.23%). Ischemia and conduc-tion disturbances were the most frequently encounte-red ECG changes (53.84%, 20.19%). Angina was sta-tistically significant associated with conduction distur-bances (p<0.01) and syncope with ischemic changes (p=0.04). Echocardiographic: 51.92% patients with pre served ejection fraction, 29.8% with left atrium diameter>40 mm, 44.23% with left ventricle hypertrophy (LVH). Dyspnea (p=0.02) and angina (p=0.05) were statistically significant associated with left atrium dia-meter >40 mm; angina (p=0.06) with LVH and dyspnea (p=0.02) with left ventricle end-diastolic diameter (LVED) >45 mm.
Conclusions: Pre-existing cardiovascular diseases were frequently involved, the most common was CHF. Dyspnea, angina, palpitations and syncope were the dominant symptoms and were statistically significant associated with ECG and echocardiographic changes.