Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, and age is a well-established independent risk factor for stroke in these patients. Whereas high-risk patients clearly benefit from anticoagulation to prevent stroke, less is known about how to treat low-risk patients. Despite the recent guidelines and studies demonstrating no benefit and excess bleeding risk with aspirin, many low-risk patients still receive this medication. Our objective was to determine the stroke rate in young patients with atrial fibrillation, a group of previously unstudied and predominantly low-risk patients. We hypothesized that the event rate would be so low as to preclude benefit from antithrombotic medications. A retrospective chart review identified patients with atrial fibrillation between the age of 18 and 35. Exclusion criteria included no ECG documentation of atrial fibrillation, anticoagulation, except around the time of cardioversion, and surgical valve disease. The primary outcome was stroke during the period of observation. The final cohort included 99 patients, mean age 27.6 years, followed for a mean of 4.3 years. Mean CHADS2 and CHA2DS2-VASc scores were 0.26 and 0.4, respectively. A total of 42.4% were taking aspirin for over 50% of the time. There was one event identified, a transient ischemic attack in a man not on aspirin with CHADS2 and CHADS2-VASc scores of 1, resulting in event rates of 0.234 per 100 patient-years overall or 0.392 among those not on aspirin. Patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation under age 35 have an exceedingly low stroke risk. We assert that aspirin may be unnecessary for most patients in this population, especially those with a CHA2DS2-VASc score of 0.

We present a case of a 43-year-old woman who presented with a non-ST elevation myocardial infarction. During her first cardiac catheterisation, she was diagnosed with a chronic total occlusion of the right coronary artery and a flow limiting dissection of her middle left anterior descending artery. The dissection of the left anterior descending artery was stented with two overlapping everolimus-eluting stents. There were no complications from this percutaneous coronary intervention. On the following day, the patient continued to have persistent chest pain and returned to the catheterisation laboratory. It was then found that the patient had a total occlusion of the right coronary artery secondary to dissection. This was also stented with three everolimus-eluting stents with excellent clinical and angiographic results. It is important to consider spontaneous multivessel coronary dissections which can be treated successfully with percutaneous coronary intervention.