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New classification scheme for atrial fibrillation symptom severity and burden
Florian Koci1, Peter Forbes1, Moussa C Mansour1
1Cardiac Arrhythmia Service, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
The American Journal of Cardiology
|June 1, 2014
Summary
A new patient-generated questionnaire for atrial fibrillation (AF) symptom severity and burden has been developed. This tool is reliable, reproducible, and correlates well with quality-of-life measures.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Patient-Reported Outcomes
- Clinical Assessment Tools
Background:
- Current clinical care for atrial fibrillation (AF) relies on symptom severity, but a standardized patient assessment tool is lacking for routine use.
- Developing a reliable and valid patient-generated tool is crucial for consistent AF symptom and burden evaluation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a patient-generated score and classification scheme for assessing AF symptom severity and burden.
- To create a simple, standardized tool for routine clinical application in managing atrial fibrillation.
Main Methods:
- Development of the Atrial Fibrillation Symptom and Burden questionnaire (2 parts: symptom severity and burden).
- Validation included assessments of reliability, construct validity, known groups validity, and interrater agreement.
- Correlation with the Short Form-12v2 (SF-12v2) health-related quality-of-life measure.
Main Results:
- The questionnaire demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach α > 0.82) and reproducibility (ICC = 0.93).
- Strong linear correlations were found with SF-12v2 physical (r=0.62) and mental (r=0.42) component summaries.
- The classification scheme showed robust discrimination between different severity levels of AF symptoms.
Conclusions:
- The developed patient-generated AF classification scheme is a robust, internally consistent, and reproducible tool.
- This simple tool is highly correlated with standardized quality-of-life measures, supporting its clinical utility.
- It offers a standardized approach to evaluating AF symptom severity and burden in routine practice.
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