Abstract 13342: Contemporary Trends in Incidence of Atrial Fibrillation in the Community

Abstract

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in clinical practice; however, contemporary data on the AF epidemic are scarce. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether the incidence of AF in the community has changed over the last decade.

Methods: We assembled a community-based cohort of incident AF events among Olmsted County, MN residents 18 years of age and older between 2000 and 2010. Potential incident AF cases were identified using inpatient and outpatient diagnostic codes along with electrocardiograms for AF and atrial flutter, and those with a diagnostic code only were validated by manual review of the medical record. Age- and sex-adjusted incidence rates were standardized to the 2000 US total population and the relative risk (RR) of AF in 2010 compared to 2000 was calculated using Poisson regression.

Results: We identified 3414 incident AF events (52% men, age range 18-104) between 2000 and 2010. The age- and sex-adjusted incidence rates (per 1,000) standardized to the 2000 US total population were 2.90 (2.53-3.27) in 2000, 3.28 (2.90-3.65) in 2005, and 3.74 (3.35-4.12) in 2010. Overall, the incidence rates increased with increasing decade of age and were higher in men compared to women (figure). The incidence trends differed markedly by sex as an increase in the incidence of AF between 2000-2010 was observed for men (RR 1.33, 95% CI 1.15-1.55), while no change was detected in women (RR 1.09, 95% CI 0.94-1.27; p-value for year*sex interaction = 0.06).

Conclusions: In the community, the incidence of AF has continued to increase over recent years in men but not in women. Reasons for this discrepancy in AF incidence by gender should be investigated.