Introduction
Determining the presence of AF in patients with cryptogenic stroke (CIS) significantly impacts prognosis as anticoagulation in. these patients is superior to aspirin for the secondary prevention of stroke .3 Multiples studies have evaluated if baseline clinical and epidemiological characteristics can predict the detection of AF on prolonged cardiac monitoring and allow to risk stratify patients. These have resulted in the development of new scores (HAVOC, Brown ESUS AF, etc.,) and the use of previous scores (CHADS, CHADS2-VASc, etc.) as means of evaluation of patients after CIS, yet none of these methods have demonstrated enough discriminating capacity to be used reliably to differentiate in which patients AF will be detected.
Two trials (CRYSTAL AF and EMBRACE) have established the effectiveness of continued cardiac monitoring for the detection of AF, and laid foundation for extended cardiac monitoring to became standard of care for patients with cryptogenic stroke.1,2
Both of these studies have mainly enrolled patients of Caucasian descent (less than 4% Blacks). Two other studies included Chinese population.4,5 As of now very little is known about effectiveness of monitoring and frequency as well as pattern of AF in AA patients with CIS.