'Pill-In-The-Pocket' Approach For Outpatient Treatment Of Recent Onset Atrial Fibrillation: The Obvious Solution?

In the clinical setting, some patients with recurrent atrial fibrillation (AF) present with episodes that are not frequent (< 1 per month) and are haemodynamically well tolerated, but which are long enough to require emergency room (ER) intervention or hospitalisation. These patients need treatment, but long-term oral prophylaxis or catheter ablation may not be the most appropriate first-line therapy. Rather, a good method of treatment in this group of patients might be the ‘pill-in-the-pocket’ approach, consisting of single-dose oral ingestion at the time and place of palpitation onset. This type of treatment has already been investigated in studies carried out in hospital in patients with recent-onset AF. The oral drugs that have been used to