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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Screening versus routine practice in detection of atrial fibrillation in patients aged 65 or over
— cluster randomised controlled trial | | Author(s) | David A Fitzmaurice, F D Richard Hobbs, Sue Jowett |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 335 no 7616, 25 August 2007 |
| Pages | pp 383-386 |
| Source | http://www.bmj.com |
| Keywords | Cardiovascular systems ; Diagnosis ; Screening ; General practice ; Clinical surveys ; Midlands [England]. |
| Annotation | As part of the screening for atrial fibrillation in the elderly (SAFE) study, the authors of this article tested whether screening was more effective than routine care in detecting atrial fibrillation in the community. Participants in this study were 14802 patients aged 65+ in the Midlands in 25 intervention general practices and 25 control practices. Patients in intervention practices were randomly allocated to systematic screening (invitation for electrocardiography) or opportunistic screening (pulse taking and invitation for electrocardiography if the pulse was irregular). Screening took place over 12 months in each practice from October 2001 to February 2003. No active screening took place in control practices. The detection rates of new cases of atrial fibrillation was 1.63% a year in the intervention practices and 1.04% in the control practices. Systematic and opportunistic screening detected similar numbers of new cases (1.62% vs 1.64%). Active screening for atrial fibrillation detects additional cases over current practice. The preferred method of screening in patients aged 65+ in primary care is opportunistic pulse taking with follow-up electrocardiography. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070907201 A |
| Classmark | BKK: LK7: 3V: L5: 3G: 82X * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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