World Heart Federation Roadmap on Atrial Fibrillation - A 2020 Update.

The World Heart Federation (WHF) commenced a Roadmap initiative in 2015 to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease and resultant burgeoning of healthcare costs. Roadmaps provide a blueprint for implementation of priority solutions for the principal cardiovascular diseases leading to death and disability. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of these conditions and is an increasing problem due to ageing of the world's population and an increase in cardiovascular risk factors that predispose to AF. The goal of the AF roadmap was to provide guidance on priority interventions that are feasible in multiple countries, and to identify roadblocks and potential strategies to overcome them. Since publication of the AF Roadmap in 2017, there have been many technological advances including devices and artificial intelligence for identification and prediction of unknown AF, better methods to achieve rhythm control, and widespread uptake of smartphones and apps that could facilitate new approaches to healthcare delivery and increasing community AF awareness. In addition, the World Health Organisation added the non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) to the Essential Medicines List, making it possible to increase advocacy for their widespread adoption as therapy to prevent stroke. These advances motivated the WHF to commission a 2020 AF Roadmap update. Three years after the original Roadmap publication, the identified barriers and solutions were judged still relevant, and progress has been slow. This 2020 Roadmap update reviews the significant changes since 2017 and identifies priority areas for achieving the goals of reducing death and disability related to AF, particularly targeted at low-middle income countries. These include advocacy to increase appreciation of the scope of the problem; plugging gaps in guideline management and prevention through physician education, increasing patient health literacy, and novel ways to increase access to integrated healthcare including mHealth and digital transformations; and greater emphasis on achieving practical solutions to national and regional entrenched barriers. Despite the advances reviewed in this update, the task will not be easy, but the health rewards of implementing solutions that are both innovative and practical will be great.

Non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants in the treatment of coronary and peripheral atherosclerosis.

Oral anticoagulants (OACs) are widely used for prevention of systemic thromboembolism, including the reduction of the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and prosthetic heart valves. There is also an increasing population of patients who require not only OACs, but also double antiplatelet therapy (DAPT). A typical example is a patient with AF and stable coronary artery disease or acute coronary syndrome (ACS), treated by percutaneous coronary intervention. In recent years, with the introduction of NOACs, triple or dual therapy has become safer. Regardless of these indications for the use of NOACs, rivaroxaban at a reduced dose has proved to efficiently reduce the risk of further thrombotic events when added to DAPT in patients who have suffered an ACS. However, such therapy increases the incidence of bleeding complications. Interesting was also the potential impact of the pleiotropic mechanism of action of non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) through protease­activated receptors 1 and 2, present on the platelets and many other cells, and changing the course of arterial atherosclerosis. The COMPASS trial has shown that in the group treated with rivaroxaban combined with aspirin, the primary outcome (cardiovascular death, stroke, and myocardial infarction) occurred significantly less frequently than in the group treated only with aspirin. However, a significantly higher number of bleedings was observed. In the subgroup of patients with peripheral artery disease, a significant reduction of the incidence of amputations was shown. The outcomes of the COMPASS trial might be a breakthrough in the treatment of coronary and peripheral atherosclerosis.