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Review article: Biomedical intelligence

Vol. 144 No. 5152 (2014)

Atrial fibrillation: A moving target

  • Jens Eckstein
  • David Conen
  • Michael Kuehne
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4414/smw.2014.14078
Cite this as:
Swiss Med Wkly. 2014;144:w14078
Published
15.12.2014

Summary

Present atrial fibrillation research focuses on three different fields of interest: Basic research to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms leading to atrial fibrillation, epidemiological studies to learn about the time course, the risk factors and the complications of atrial fibrillation, and clinical trials to further improve existing treatment strategies and develop new ones. The focus of this manuscript was the mechanisms, the epidemiology, the diagnosis and the treatment of the arrhythmia per se. Therefore, the field of prevention of stroke and systemic embolism is mostly excluded for the purpose of this article.

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