The Impact of Weight Categories on the Association Between Atrial Fibrillation/Flutter and Known Risk Factors: A Nationwide Inpatient Data Analysis

TL;DR

This study shows that traditional risk factors for atrial fibrillation/flutter remain strong predictors regardless of a patient's weight category.

Contribution

The study reveals that traditional risk factors for Afib/Aflut are consistently associated with the condition across different weight categories.

Findings

Obesity and morbid obesity are independently associated with Afib/Aflut.

Traditional risk factors for Afib/Aflut remain significant regardless of weight categories.

Male gender and Caucasians are strong independent predictors of Afib/Aflut across all weight categories.

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter (Afib/Aflut) are the most common arrhythmias presenting to the emergency department. The goal of this study was to evaluate any predictor of Afib/flut with cardiovascular risk factors and demographics based on weight categories. Methods: Using ICD-10 codes from the large Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database in the years 2016–2020, we evaluate any association between the presence of Afib/Aflut with risk factors and demographics in different weight categories in adults over the age of 18. Results: A total of 23,037,013 afib/flut patients were found in the NIS database. Obesity and morbid obesity were independently associated with the presence of Afib/Aflut (for multivariate OR obesity: 1.28, CI 1.27–1.28, p < 0.001; for morbid obesity: OR 1.9, CI 1.89–1.91, p < 0.001). Regardless of weight categories such as cachexia, overweight, obese, or morbidly obese, traditional risk factors remained independently associated with Afib/Aflut. Furthermore, male gender and Caucasians were independently associated with the presence of Afib/Aflut regardless of any weight categories. (For example, in the overweight categories, the multivariate OR for females was 0.69, CI: 0.69–0.69, p < 0.001, and for African Americans, OR 0.62, CI 0.61–0.62, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Traditional risk factors were persistently associated with the occurrence of atrial fibrillation regardless of weight categories. Furthermore, the Caucasian race and male gender were also strong independent predictors of Afib/Aflut.

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