Management of Atrial Fibrillation: A Practical Approach

The last two decades we have witnessed significant progress in the understanding of atrial fibrillation, from its pathophysiology to its complex and diverse etiologies and relation to most devastating complication, stroke. Despite several recent breakthroughs on novel oral anticoagulation, antiarrhythmic agents and interventional procedures, we are still losing the battle or the management remains at least unsatisfactory. This in part may
be due to the evolving nature of this rhythm disorder and the fact all atrial fibrillations are not the same, thus we are not dealing with the same entity.
Despite many guidelines and consensus from many medical societies as well as several large texts on the subject we feel that there exists a gap between academic centers and practitioners who indeed see 80% of patients with AF. This short text is therefore designed to provide the most recent evidence-based information and how to deal with patients with Atrial Fibrillation. The target audiences of this book are primary physicians, Emergency room doctors, hospitalists, internists, and generally cardiologists who care after the majority of these patients. We would like to thank our colleagues who provided their up to date evidence-based manuscripts.