Study Population
Patients admitted with a diagnosis of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation,
persistent atrial fibrillation, chronic atrial fibrillation or
unspecified atrial fibrillation who subsequently underwent a
percutaneous left atrial appendage closure procedure were screened for
in the NRD (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Flowchart delineating selection criteria for index
LAAC hospitalizations.
The International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical
Modification/Procedure Coding System (ICD-10) was first used to identify
patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, persistent atrial
fibrillation, chronic atrial fibrillation or unspecified atrial
fibrillation (ICD 10: I48.0, I48.1, I48.2 and I48.91 respectively). The
ICD-10 procedure code 02L73DK was then used as the identifier for left
atrial appendage closure with an intraluminal device using a
percutaneous approach. Patients aged ≥18 years who met these criteria
were included in our initial sample. Patients who were discharged in
December 2016 due to lack of 30-day follow up data, patients who died
during the index hospitalization, and patients with missing discharge
disposition were excluded from analysis. The final sample size was
comprised of 2,975 index LAAC procedures.