Adherence to the atrial fibrillation better care pathway and its associated factors among rural patients with atrial fibrillation in China: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: The atrial fibrillation better care (ABC) pathway is an effective strategy for the integrated management of atrial fibrillation (AF). Current data on adherence to the ABC pathway among rural patients with AF in China are limited. OBJECTIVES: To investigated adherence to the ABC pathway and its associated factors among rural patients with AF in China. METHODS: In the cross-sectional study, we recruited 870 rural patients with AF from July 2022 to July 2023 in China. AF-related sociodemographic and clinical data was collected. RESULTS: Among the 870 rural patients with AF, 437 (50.23 %) were male, 714 (82.07 %) were ≥65 years old. The level of adherence to ABC pathway was extremely low (5.75 %), and its associated factors included patients ≥75 years (compared with those <65 years, OR=0.165, 95 %CI: 0.065-0.417, P < 0.001), junior middle school and senior middle school education or above (compared with primary school education or below, OR=3.441, 95 %CI: 1.144-10.351, P = 0.028; OR=11.438, 95 %CI: 3.758-34.814, P < 0.001), average monthly household income per capita 1000-3000 RMB and >3000 RMB (compared with <1000 RMB, OR=3.993, 95 %CI: 1.343-11.877, P = 0.013; OR=4.474, 95 %CI: 1.478-13.541, P = 0.008), persistent AF (compared with paroxysmal AF, OR=0.062, 95 %CI: 0.008-0.466, P = 0.007) and multimorbidity (OR=0.356, 95 %CI: 0.163-0.781, P = 0.010). CONCLUSIONS: There is an urgent need to develop targeted interventions and national policies to improve the adherence to the ABC pathway of rural AF patients in China.

Fear-specific leftward bias in gaze direction judgment.

Previous studies have shown that humans have a left spatial attention bias in cognition and behaviour. However, whether there exists a leftward perception bias of gaze direction has not been investigated. To address this gap, we conducted three behavioural experiments using a forced-choice gaze direction judgment task. The point of subjective equality (PSE) was employed to measure whether there was a leftward perception bias of gaze direction, and if there was, whether this bias was modulated by face emotion. The results of experiment 1 showed that the PSE of fearful faces was significantly positive as compared to zero and this effect was not found in angry, happy, and neutral faces, indicating that participants were more likely to judge the gaze direction of fearful faces as directed to their left-side space, namely a leftward perception bias. With the response keys counterbalanced between participants, experiment 2a replicated the findings in experiment 1. To further investigate whether the gaze direction perception variation was contributed by emotional or low-level features of faces, experiment 2b and 3 used inverted faces and inverted eyes, respectively. The results revealed similar leftward perception biases of gaze direction in all types of faces, indicating that gaze direction perception was biased by emotional information in faces rather than low-level facial features. Overall, our study demonstrates that there a fear-specific leftward perception bias in processing gaze direction. These findings shed new light on the cerebral lateralization in humans.