Antonio Raviele (Venice, Italy), the president of Venice Arrhythmias 2019 (3–5 October; Venice, Italy), talks to BLearning Cardio about some of the current challenges in atrial fibrillation (AF) management, which he notes include lifestyle modification and risk factor modification and the risk to stop oral anticoagulation after an apparently successful AF ablation.
He also outlines what he believes are the “three most controversial aspects” in the field of cardiac arrhythmia at the moment. One of these, says Raviele, is the question of when silent AF justifies the start of oral anticoagulation. The other controversies include whether “we should switch all patients on Coumadin to DOACs” (direct oral anticoagulants) and whether AF ablation really reduces hard endpoints such as cardiac mortality and stroke.
