Viewpoint: Stroke Prevention in Recent Guidelines for the Management of Patients with Atrial Fibrillation: An Appraisal

Abstract

Formal guidelines play an important role in disseminating the best available evidence knowledge and are expected to provide simple and practical recommendations for the most optimal management of patients with various conditions. Such guidelines have important implications for many disease states, which thereby could be more professionally managed in everyday clinical practice by clinicians with divergent educational backgrounds, and also more easily implemented in wards or outpatient clinics, eliminating inequalities in health care management. In this brief Viewpoint we provide an appraisal on the recommendations pertinent to the prevention of atrial fibrillation-related stroke or systemic thromboembolism, as provided in recently published guidelines for the management of this arrhythmia.

Keywords: Atrial fibrillation; Guidelines; Stroke prevention.