Atrial fibrillation may cause thromboembolic events and the risk of thromboembolic events increase with the number of clinical and echocardiographic risk factors. Although the benefit of anticoagulant therapy in preventing thromboembolic events was clearly shown, a significant number of patients with atrial fibrillation were not under anticoagulant therapy. However, whatever the patient's reason for warfarin underutilisation, probably it is the main obstacle for reducing stroke risk in atrial fibrillation. Consequently, it makes the use of any risk factor calculation useless.
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