Rationale and design of the EACVI AFib Echo Europe Registry for assessing relationships of echocardiographic parameters with clinical thrombo-embolic and bleeding risk profile in non-valvular atrial fibrillation

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for management of atrial fibrillation (AF) recommend the use of CHA 2 DS 2 VASc risk score for assessment of thromboembolic (TE) risk, whereas the stratification of bleeding risk should be obtained by HAS-Bleed to balance the most appropriate anticoagulation (OAC) therapy. However, men with CHA 2 DS 2 VASc score = 1 and women with CHA 2 DS 2 VASc = 2, who are at intermediate TE risk, represent a grey zone where guidelines do not provide a definite OAC indication. Accordingly, implementation of risk stratification with echocardiography could be extremely useful. Both prospective and cross-sectional studies on transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) prediction of TE events and studies utilizing transoesophageal echocardiographic parameters as surrogate markers of TE events makes sustainable the hypothesis that echocardiography could improve TE prediction in non-valvular AF. Moreover, considering the close association of AF and stroke, all echo-Doppler parameters that have shown to predict AF onset and recurrence could be useful also to predict TE events in this clinical setting. Accordingly, EACVI AFib Echo Europe Registry has been designed as an observational, cross-sectional study, with the aim of evaluating: (i) left atrial (LA) size and function together with left ventricular geometry, systolic and diastolic functions in paroxysmal, persistent, and permanent AF; (ii) relationships of structural/functional parameters with clinical TE and bleeding risk profile. By the AFib Echo Europe Registry, we expect to collect data on echocardiographic phenotype of patients with AF. The large data set accumulated will be useful to test the level of agreement of different echocardiographic measurements with the available risk scores.