Summary

Approximately 2.5 million patients in the United States and 3 million in Europe suffer from atrial fibrillation (AF). Due to the growing epidemic of obesity and other AF risk factors, this number is expected to grow to 16 million by the year 2050 in the US alone. Management of AF is very difficult to standardize; AF covers a wide spectrum of patients and is associated with a number of heart diseases. The contributing mechanisms have not been fully unraveled, and therefore one therapeutic modality is not universally appropriate. Understanding effective treatments of AF and how they can be improved over the next several decades is critical to lowering this looming number.