Atrial Fibrillation and Death After Myocardial Infarction

A well established association between atrial fibrillation (AF) and increased risk of death exists in the general population.1,2 Increasingly, it is recognized that AF also is associated with a higher mortality in specific clinical subsets, such as in patients with heart failure,3 renal failure,4 stroke,5 diabetes mellitus,6 hypertension,7 and after cardiac surgery.8 The association between AF and mortality is of little surprise, given the adverse consequences of the arrhythmia, such as stroke and heart failure, which may serve as proximate mediators of death.