Weekend versus weekday hospitalization and clinical outcomes in atrial fibrillation patients with and without stroke

Purpose: The relation between hospitalization timing and risk of clinical outcomes among patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) with and without stroke remained undetermined.

Methods: Rehospitalization due to AF, cardiovascular (CV) death and all-cause mortality were the outcomes of interest in this study. Multivariable Cox proportional hazard model was applied to estimate the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI).

Results: While considering patients with AF hospitalized during weekdays without stroke as the reference group, patients with AF hospitalized during weekends with stroke had the risk of AF rehospitalization, CV death and all-cause death by 1.48 (95% CI 1.44 to 1.51), 1.77 (95% CI 1.71 to 1.83) and 1.17 (95% CI 1.15 to 1.19) times, respectively.

Conclusion: Patients with AF hospitalized during weekends with stroke had the worst clinical outcomes.