Objective: Assessment of cardiovascular risk factors, demographic and clinical characteristics in a group of hospitalized patients for an episode of paroxysmal atri-al fibrillation (AF), first diagnosed or recurrent. Identi-fication of characteristics.
Methods: We retrospectively examined data derived from 104 patients who were hospitalized for a paro-xysmal atrial fibrillation episode in the Cardiology De-partment of the „St. Pantelimon” Emergency Hospital, over a 1-year and 2 months period, from 23.04.2015 to 22.06.2016. Different data were collected and evalua-ted (e.g. clinical and anamnesis) by review of records. We identified their characteristics and the correlations between them.
Results: We included 104 patients with a median age of 70.3 years, the majority of subjects were in the ei-ghth decade of life; 68% were female. Arterial hyper-tension was the most common cardiovascular risk factor (79.8%), followed by dyslipidemia (48.07%) and obesity (31.73%). Congestive heart failure (CHF) was the most common pre-existing cardiovascular disea-se (50%), followed by coronary artery disease (CAD) (37.5%) and stroke (11.5%); we found statistically sig-nificant differences between the two types of paroxys-mal AF, recurrent or first diagnosed (p=0.07). The do-minant symptoms were palpitations (65.38%), dyspnea (56.73%) and angina (44.23%). Age group above 65 years old was statistically significant (SS) associated with palpitations (p=0.006) and fatigue (p=0.05); age group under 65 years old with angina (p=0.03); history of CAD was SS associated with dyspnea (p=0.04) and angina (p<0.01); history of stroke was SS associated with vertigo (p=0.03); history of CHF with dyspnea (p<0.01). 66.4% patients had a CHA₂DS₂-VASc score of more than 3 points and 22.2% had a HAS-BLED score more than 3 points.
Conclusions: Female sex predominates in paroxysmal AF. The most common risk factor was arterial hyper-tension. There was a significantly higher percentage of patients with preexisting cardiovascular diseases, most of them had CHF, with SS differences in relation to the type of paroxysmal AF. Dyspnea, angina and syncope were the dominant symptoms and/or SS associated with age and cardiovascular disease. A high percentage of hospitalized patients had a CHA₂DS₂-VASc score of >3 points; the majority of patients had a HAS-BLED score of <3 points.