Atrial Fibrillation Recurrence Is Linked to Sleep Disordered Breathing

Atrial fibrillation (AF) patients who have undiagnosed sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) are twice as likely to relapse as those who are diagnosed with SDB, according to research published in the International Journal of Cardiology and Vascular Biology.

Patients having Atrial Fibrillation catheter ablation (OSA-AF) at a Dutch center from December 2018 to February 2020 were included in the cross-sectional Effect of undiagnosed Obstructive Sleep Apnea study.
Adults who had undergone a first catheter ablation of AF between 12 and 18 months prior to SDB screening were eligible.

The WatchPAT-200U was used for SDB screening (Itamar Medical, Caesarea, Israel). To qualify for SDB, a person must have an AHI of 15 or greater.

The STOP-BANG and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) questionnaires were also given to the individuals.

The STOP-BANG questionnaire was filled out by 95 people, and an abnormal score was obtained by 64% of them (intermediate or high-risk).
Patients with SDB had an aberrant STOP-BANG score (79 percent vs. 56 percent, P =.02) compared to patients without SDB.

SDB (AHI 15) was detected by aberrant STOP-Bang scores with a sensitivity of 79% and a specificity of 44%, respectively, which had a positive and negative predictive value of 79% and 79%, respectively.
The diagnostic accuracies were only 57%.