Red cells distribution width (RDW) is a measure of red cell size variability, but
little is known about the relation between RDW and outcomes in atrial fibrillation
(AF).The aims of our study were to evaluate the association between RDW values, AF
patients’ profile and outcomes. Consecutive patients with ECG-confirmed AF were divided
in 3 groups according to tertiles of RDW values (≤13.5%, 13.6% to 14.6%, >14.6%).We
enrolled 457 patients, 61.9% males, median (interquartile range) age 74 (66 to 80).
Both CHA2DS2-VASc and HAS-BLED scores increased progressively according to RDW tertiles. During
follow-up, there was an increased risk for all-cause death and the composite end point
in the highest RDW tertile (p <0.001 for both outcomes). On multivariate Cox regression
analysis, the highest RDW tertile was independently associated with all-cause death
(hazard ratio [HR] 3.23, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.04 to 10.00) and the composite
end point (HR 2.04, 95% CI 1.12 to 3.70). RDW as a continuous variable was also independently
associated with all cause death and the composite outcome (HR 1.16, 95% CI 1.02 to
1.31 and HR 1.16, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.27, respectively). In conclusion, in a real-life
AF population, RDW is associated with clinical factors indicating a worse profile
and is independently associated with increased risks of all-cause death and other
clinical events.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 22, 2019
Received in revised form:
August 8,
2019
Received:
June 1,
2019
Footnotes
Vincenzo Livio Malavasi, Marco Proietti, and Giuseppe Boriani take responsibility for all aspects of the reliability and freedom from bias of the data presented and their discussed interpretation.
All other authors contributed significantly to the paper with data collection and paper revision for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Funding: No funding was received for this work.
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© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
