Hello,
Apologies if I've missed a previous post about what follows, but this is just a post pointing anyone who's interested towards an article on the Medscape site, reporting some recent research on the extent to which paroxysmal AF tends to progress to persistent AF: it presents a mix of positive and negative data, in that 'Ten-year results from the Canadian Registry of Atrial Fibrillation (CARAF) of more than 700 patients with paroxysmal AF showed that only 36% of patients went on to have persistent AF. But 30% of these patients died from any cause in the decade after they were first diagnosed with AF' (although I can't see anything in the report that pins the previous mortality rate on the effects of AF). The report also notes that 'the progression from paroxysmal AF to persistent AF by 10 years was 1.4 to 3 times more likely in patients who were older or had structural heart disease, including mitral regurgitation, aortic stenosis, left ventricular hypertrophy, or an enlarged left atrium'.
Here's the link (it's on the Medscape site, which is free to join):