The epidemiological burden of atrial fibrillation: a challenge for clinicians and health care systems.

There is increasing awareness that management of atrial fibrillation (AF) and its complications (particularly strokes) constitutes an important burden for health care systems and a major clinical challenge. AF is the most common sustained arrhythmia, and detailed knowledge of its epidemiology is important both for provision of adequate care and for resource allocation. Available epidemiological studies have mainly focused on prevalence of AF. Important frequency variations have been recorded, often linked to different detection procedures.1 Most of what we know about the incidence of AF in the general population comes from two large North American studies and a single study from Britain mostly regarding hospitalized patients.1 Thus, the new population-based cohort study by Herringa et al.2 on the epidemiological profile of AF in Rotterdam is highly relevant. This work, based on almost 8000 inhabitants of (a suburb of) Rotterdam aged at least 55 years at enrollment, provides a valuable picture of the age-specific prevalence and incidence of AF, as well as the lifetime risk of developing this clinically challenging arrhythmia.