Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) have an increased risk for stroke and are often prescribed oral anticoagulation (OAC) therapy. OAC therapy can prevent disastrous strokes, but at the expense of increased bleeding risks. There are now well-established guidelines to assess the risk of stroke and bleeding in AF patients to determine whether OAC is needed. However, in new a study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, researchers found that primary care physicians were often under- or over-estimating stroke and/or bleeding risk, in part because they failed to utilize guideline-recommended risk scoring approaches in one-half and three-quarters of their patients, respectively. This, in turn led to under- and over-prescription of OACs, misdosing, and other problems that could result in an unnecessarily increased risk of stroke and bleeding events.
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