Subclinical Atrial Tachyarrhythmias:Implantable Devices and Remote Monitoring

Atrial fibrillation (AF) and Atrial Tachyarrhythmias (AT) are the most common clinical arrhythmias and their worst issue is a well-recognized correlation with ischemic stroke. High incidence of "subclinical" AF/ATs has been demonstrated in several trials (TRENDS, ASSERT, CRYSTAL AF, EMBRACE) in patients with both cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDS) and external loop recorders. Moreover, a relationship between device-detected AF/ATs and stroke risk has been observed in the same studies. However, while the net clinical benefit of the antithrombotic treatment is well established in patients with "clinical" atrial fibrillation, there may be a lower benefit in patients with device-detected arrhythmias. Subclinical AF/ATs may be considered as a marker of stroke risk rather than the proximate cause and their burden may be used in combination with CHA2DS2-VASC and HAS-BLED scores to identify high-risk population who deserves anticoagulation. Today the remote monitoring associated with the CIEDs is effective in the early detecting of AF/ATs by avoiding delays in the therapy evaluation, as demonstrated by several trials (TRUST, CONNECT, COMPAS). However clinical evidence for stroke risk reduction by remote monitoring is still awaited; the recent trial IMPACT failed to demonstrate that the handling of the anticoagulation therapy guided by device-detected ATs and remote monitoring improves the patients' outcome. The challenges for clinicians are to deal with the huge data entry, to define new organizational models, to improve device patient management and to continuously update AF guidelines in according to the great amount of data offered by the new technology.