Prevalence of atrial fibrillation in COPD patients of Rahimyar Khan

Aim: to determine the prevalence of atrial fibrillation in cases of copd patients of distt. r y khan. study design: observational cross sectional study place of study and duration of study: study was designed in the department medicine of sheikh zayed hospital,rahim yar khan and duration of study was seven months. methods: patients were selected by the help of a consultant physician with the use of a standardized form which was developed for this present study. inclusion criteria of the study were both genders either male or female of age more than 40 years and have history of copd. the cases were labelled as copd according to gold 2015 guidelines. atrial fibrillation was labelled as yes on the basis of absent p wave and irregular heart rate. results: in the present study,there were total 100 cases of copd out of which 82(82%) were males and 18(8%) females. the mean age was 56.45±7.23 years.there were 58(58%) cases that had copd for more than 5 years and 68(68%) of cases had class iv of copd. atrial fibrillation was seen in 18(18%) of the cases. atrial fibrillation was seen in 13(22.41%) out of 58 cases that had copd more than 5 years with p= 0.02. there was no significant difference in terms of severity of copd where it was seen in 5(15.62%) cases with class iii and 13(19.12%) cases of class iv out of their respective groups with p= 0.43. conclusion: atrial fibrillation is not uncommon complication of copd and itis significantly associated with duration of copd more than 5 years.