Cardiac Remodeling and Diastolic Dysfunction in Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) leads to the development of cardiac remodeling/diastolic dysfunction and vice versa. We intended to determine whether cardiac remodeling/diastolic dysfunction is present at early stages of AF.

We studied 175 patients with paroxysmal AF, compared with 175 matched control subjects, who had available echocardiography data to investigate the association between echocardiographic variables and AF from the STANISLAS cohort.

In this study (mean age 55 years; 70.3% male), patients with paroxysmal AF had greater left ventricular mass compared to matched controls (p < 0.05). Patients with paroxysmal AF were also likely to have larger left atrial volume and a higher peak tricuspid regurgitation velocity, leading to higher prevalence (though <10% in the AF group) of diastolic dysfunction (all-p < 0.05). Multivariable conditional logistic regression models showed that paroxysmal AF was significantly associated with increased left ventricular mass and left atrial enlargement (all-p < 0.001), but not with e' and deceleration time of E wave (all-p > 0.1).

Left ventricular mass and left atrial enlargement rather than diastolic dysfunction (as evaluated by echocardiography) were associated with paroxysmal AF irrespective of body mass index, blood pressure and renal function. These findings suggest that cardiac remodeling may occur very early in the natural history of AF.