Study Population
Patients admitted with a diagnosis of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, persistent atrial fibrillation, chronic atrial fibrillation or unspecified atrial fibrillation who subsequently underwent a percutaneous left atrial appendage closure procedure were screened for in the NRD (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Flowchart delineating selection criteria for index LAAC hospitalizations.
The International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification/Procedure Coding System (ICD-10) was first used to identify patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, persistent atrial fibrillation, chronic atrial fibrillation or unspecified atrial fibrillation (ICD 10: I48.0, I48.1, I48.2 and I48.91 respectively). The ICD-10 procedure code 02L73DK was then used as the identifier for left atrial appendage closure with an intraluminal device using a percutaneous approach. Patients aged ≥18 years who met these criteria were included in our initial sample. Patients who were discharged in December 2016 due to lack of 30-day follow up data, patients who died during the index hospitalization, and patients with missing discharge disposition were excluded from analysis. The final sample size was comprised of 2,975 index LAAC procedures.