Home Sleep Apnea Test to Screen Patients With Atrial Fibrillation for Sleep Apnea Prior to Catheter Ablation.

BACKGROUND

Whether all atrial fibrillation (AF) patients should be evaluated for sleep apnea before catheter ablation (CA) remains controversial. Watch-type peripheral arterial tonometry (W-PAT) is a home sleep testing device and an easier tool for diagnosing sleep apnea than polysomnography. We investigated the prevalence and predictors of sleep apnea using W-PAT in unscreened sleep apnea patients with AF before CA.

METHODS AND RESULTS

The study was conducted under a retrospective, single-center, observational design. We included 776 consecutive patients who underwent both W-PAT and AF ablation. Sleep apnea assessments were successfully performed in 774 patients (99.7%; age 65±11 years, 73.3% male; body mass index [BMI] 24.1±3.5, 56.8% paroxysmal AF). The mean apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) was 20.1±15.6. Although 81.7% of the patients had normal Epworth sleepiness scores (mean 6.5), only 88 (11.4%) had a normal AHI (AHI <5) and 412 (53.2%) had moderate-severe sleep apnea (AHI ≥15). Obesity, male sex, nonparoxysmal AF, hypertension, and a left atrial diameter (LAd) ≥40 mm were predictors of moderate-severe sleep apnea. However, the prevalence of moderate-severe sleep apnea in patients without those predictors (i.e., non-obesity (44.2%), female sex (43.0%), paroxysmal AF (43.9%), no hypertension (45.5%)), and LAd <40 mm (41.0%) was considerably high.

CONCLUSIONS

Almost all patients successfully underwent W-PAT to diagnose sleep apnea. Patients undergoing AF ablation had a high prevalence of sleep apnea, and screening for sleep apnea was important in those patients even if they did not have sleepiness or risk factors.