{"id":36157,"date":"2013-04-16T16:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T20:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=36157"},"modified":"2013-04-16T16:13:16","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T20:13:16","slug":"small-study-links-left-anterior-fascicular-block-to-af-and-chf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/04\/16\/small-study-links-left-anterior-fascicular-block-to-af-and-chf\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Study Links Left Anterior Fascicular Block to AF and CHF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In people without known cardiovascular (CV) disease the presence of left anterior fascicular block (LAFB) has not been thought to indicate increased risk. Now a research letter published in <em>JAMA<\/em>\u00a0finds evidence that elderly people with LAFB are more likely to die and to develop atrial fibrillation (AF) and congestive heart failure (CHF) than people without LAFB.<\/p>\n<p>The authors speculated that LAFB may be a marker for left heart fibrosis, which is\u00a0a substrate of AF and CHF. They then examined the long-term outcomes of \u00a01,664 participants without overt CV disease enrolled in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS). Of these, 39 patients had LAFB at baseline. After a median followup of 15.7 years and adjustment for baseline differences and risk factors, the LAFB patients had significantly increased risk for AF (HR 1.89, CI 1.11-3.24, p = .02), CHF (HR 2.43, CI 1.44-4.12, p = .001) and death (HR, 1.57, CI 1.08-2.26, p = .02). The authors ruled out progression of conduction disease as a cause because none of the LAFB patients went on to develop LBBB and after 10 years only two required a pacemaker.<\/p>\n<p>The authors concluded that &#8220;LAFB may be a clinically relevant marker of an individual\u2019s propensity to left heart fibrosis.&#8221; They acknowledged that &#8220;it remains possible that LAFB is simply a marker of undetected underlying hypertension or coronary disease.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In people without known cardiovascular (CV) disease the presence of left anterior fascicular block (LAFB) has not been thought to indicate increased risk. Now a research letter published in JAMA\u00a0finds evidence that elderly people with LAFB are more likely to die and to develop atrial fibrillation (AF) and congestive heart failure (CHF) than people without [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1,7],"tags":[365,467,1767,1768],"class_list":["post-36157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electrophysiology","category-general","category-prevention","tag-af","tag-chf","tag-lafb","tag-left-anterior-fascicular-block"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}