Silent cerebral ischemia in patients with chronic atrial fibrillation--a case-control study.

The cerebral CT-scan results of 72 patients with chronic atrial fibrillation (AF) were compared to those of an age- and sex-matched control group, affected by muscle-tensive headache. None of the patients in the study had any neurologic symptoms. All were normal on neurologic examination. Mean age was 68 years in both groups. Patients with atrial fibrillation had a higher prevalence of hypertension, diabetes and hyperlipidemia, although the differences were not significant. Thirty-two patients (44.4%) with AF showed hypodense lesions on cerebral CT-scan, suggestive of small infarcts, whereas this finding was present only in eight control subjects (11.1%) (p less than 0.05). These results confirm in part the observations reported in literature and suggest a more thorough examination of the problem regarding the prophylaxis of thrombo-embolic risk in patients affected by chronic AF.