Estimated stroke risk, yield, and number needed to screen for atrial fibrillation detected through single time screening: a multicountry patient-level meta-analysis of 141,220 screened individuals

by Nicole Lowres, Jake Olivier, Tze-Fan Chao, Shih-Ann Chen, Yi Chen, Axel Diederichsen, David A. Fitzmaurice, Juan Jose Gomez-Doblas, Joseph Harbison, Jeff S. Healey, F. D. Richard Hobbs, Femke Kaasenbrood, William Keen, Vivian W. Lee, Jes S. Lindholt, Gregory Y. H. Lip, Georges H. Mairesse, Jonathan Mant, Julie W. Martin, Enrique Mart ín-Rioboó, David D. McManus, Javier Muñiz, Thomas Münzel, Juliet Nakamya, Lis Neubeck, Jessica J. Orchard, Luis Ángel Pérula de Torres, Marco Proietti, F. Russell Quinn, Andrea K. Roalfe, Roopinder K. Sandhu, Renate B. Schnabel, Breda Smyth, Apurv Soni, Robert Tieleman, Jiguang Wang, Philipp S . Wild, Bryan P. Yan, Ben Freedman BackgroundThe precise age distribution and calculated stroke risk of screen-detected atrial fibrillation (AF) is not known. Therefore, it is not possible to determine the number needed to screen (NNS) to identify one treatable new AF case (NNS-Rx) (i.e., Class-1 oral anticoagulation [OAC] treatment recommendation) in each age stratum. If the NNS-Rx is known for each age stratum, precise cost-effectiveness and sensitivity simulations can be performed based on the age distribution of the population/region to be screened. Such calculations are required by national authorities and organisations responsible for health system budgets to determine the best age cutoffs for screening programs and decide whether programs of screening should be funded. Therefore, we aimed to determine the exact yield and calculated stroke-ri...
Source: PLoS Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Source Type: research