Atrial fibrillation monitoring: mathematics meets real life.

In today’s clinical practice the diagnosis of atrial fibrillation (AF) is made by an ECG documentation that fulfills established criteria.1 That documentation is of utmost clinical importance because it is the basis for further therapeutic interventions, such as rhythm control strategies or introduction of oral anticoagulation. ECG documentation of AF, however, carries 2 distinct limitations. First, the occurrence is unpredictable in terms of onset and duration of arrhythmia episodes. Second, patient symptoms are of limited value identifying arrhythmia episodes and to subsequently enable successful ECG recordings. As such, multiple studies have described a high prevalence of asymptomatic or silent AF in various patient populations.2–8