When would you consider long-term cardiac monitoring to look for atrial fibrillation in patients with mitral stenosis given their baseline elevated risk for atrial fibrillation and thrombosis?   

This is a thought-provoking question. Not only is Afib a risk factor for strokes but these strokes can be particularly devastating. While screening for subclinical Afib in large populations is described, there is little data to show that this leads to clinical benefits (1, 2). The benefit of detecti...

In patients who have underlying substrates, ie., MS, for the generation of atrial arrhythmias it is imperative to determine the arrhythmia burden so that appropriate therapies can be initiated. In patients  with mitral valve stenosis, increased left pressures result in the development of myocar...