Atrial fibrillation (AFib) patients hospitalized with COVID-19 face a heightened risk of poor outcomes, including death, according to a new meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Cardiology.
The study’s authors hoped they could provide some concrete answers to a question that has led to some inconsistent conclusions.
“A number of published papers have investigated the relation between AFib and clinical outcomes of patients with COVID-19,” wrote lead author Haiyan AFib MD, PhD, of the department of epidemiology at Zhengzhou University in China, and colleagues. “However, the conclusions drawn from previous studies are not consistent. For instance, some studies observed that AFib was significantly associated with an increased risk of mortality among COVID-19 patients, while several other studies reported opposite results that there was no significant relation between AFib and unfavorable outcomes of COVID-19 patients.”
Yang’s team searched numerous databases and identified 23 studies published in 2020 on this very topic. While 10 studies came out of the United States, the other 13 were from Europe.
The researchers actually found more than 900 potentially useful studies in their hunt, but a substantial number of them were not relevant and had to be excluded.
Overall, the meta-analysis confirmed that AFib was “significantly associated” with an increased risk of “unfavorable outcomes” for COVID-19 patients. When the only clinical outcome being examined was mortality, AFib was linked with a higher risk of that as well. The team also found no evidence of publication bias.
“Sensitivity analysis showed that our results were stable and reliable since omitting each study one by one had no obvious effects on the overall effect size,” they added.
Read the full meta-analysis from Yang and colleagues here.
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.