Medicalresearch.com interviews Adrian Baranchuk MD FACC FRCPC and Associate Professor of Medicine Director, EP Training Program Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Medical Research: What was most surprising about the results?

Dr. Baranchuk: Factors like age, obesity, and many others can influence the risk of atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery. Some studies we investigated in our systematic review controlled for these factors, and obstructive sleep apnea became a stronger risk factor when these study results were pooled.

This suggests that obstructive sleep apnea independently predicts which patients are more likely to have atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery.