Long-term incidence and predictive factors of thromboembolic events after a cryoballoon ablation for atrial fibrillation

Discontinuation of oral anticoagulation therapy after successful atrial fibrillation ablation: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies

“…After a review of titles and abstracts, 2,472 studies were excluded, and the remaining 32 were considered potentially eligible trials and identified by reading the full-text. Finally, a total of 10 studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] were included. After screening the reference lists of included articles, we retrieved two potential studies, but neither met our inclusion criteria.…”

“…These studies were published between 2006 and 2020. Among the ten studies included here, four were conducted in the United States [12][13][14]16], two in China [19,20], one in the UK and Australia [21], one in France [18], and one in Italy [17]. The sample size ranged from 108 [16] to 4512 [19] patients.…”

“…The duration of followup across the studies ranged from 1.9 to 5 years. Warfarin as the only anticoagulant drug was prescribed for patients in all but four studies [16,[18][19][20], which included partial patients on direct OACs (DOACs). OAC was discontinued in 7,160 (64.2%) patients.…”

“…OAC was discontinued in 7,160 (64.2%) patients. Eight studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]21] reported the blanking period, which ranged from two to three months. The time frame of discontinuation of OAC ranged from 2 to 12 months.…”

“…Two studies [17,19] stratified patients according to the CHA 2 DS 2 -VAS c score and reported corresponding clinical outcomes in the two groups. Nine studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] were assessed to be high quality according to the NOS score (range 7 to 9). The results of the quality assessment are described in S2 Table.…”