During the ESC2012, Munich, Germany, Professor Gregory Y.H Lip, from the University of Birmingham, UK and Chair of the Executive Committee of the ESC Atrial Fibrillation Registry General talks to the ISCP about the Atrial Fibrillation Registry Update.

Real life registries inform the development of risk scores.

“We have in the field of stroke prevention and atrial fibrillation a lot of data from randomized controlled trials,” says Professor Gregory Y.H Lip, University of Birmingham, UK. “One of the issues about the trial is that skeptics question how those clinical trials are useful to clinical practice.”
“Just to give an example, if you turned the clock back two decades ago when the first trials of AF were performed, where warfarin was compared to placebo control – in those trials, less than 10% of the patients who were screened were actually entered into those trials. So in that sense many risk factors such as stroke were not very well recorded, nor were they consistently defined,” he adds.

Professor Lip believes that the solution lies in real life registries. “One can look at real life data, where you can get comprehensive information on what’s actually happening in the real world,” he says. “Real life registries have provided a tremendous amount of information on what are the risk factors for stroke and also the proportions of patients getting particular drugs for the management of atrial fibrillation.”

These registries have informed the development of numerous risk scores, for example for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation that have changed clinical practice. “This includes scores such as the CHADS VAS [CHECK] scores, both of which are now recommended in the 2012 Focus Update of the ESC Atrial Fibrillation Guideline.”

“And on that note, this is a major highlight of the ESC meeting in Munich this year with the launch of the Focus Update Guidelines in this publication,” he says.