Patients
A total of 1639 patients were considered eligible. Among them, 476
patients met the exclusion criteria; 21 with an inadequate dose
reduction of DOACs, 285 with afternoon procedures, 201 with adjunctive
ablation procedures including 78 cavotricuspid isthmus ablations, 69
linear lesions, 32 superior vena cava isolations, and 42 non-pulmonary
vein trigger ablations. We thus finally studied 1163 patients. We found
183 (15.7%) patients with preexisting anemia, whose hemoglobin levels
were 12±0.9 g/dL in males and 11.2±0.6 g/dL in females. No patients with
severe anemia with a hemoglobin level of <9.0 g/dL were noted.
Patients with preexisting anemia were older, smaller, and more likely to
be female than those without. The anemic patients had a more decreased
estimated glomerular filtration ratio, more increased D-dimer level, and
greater CHA2DS2-VASc and ORBIT scores.
The anemic patients were more likely to be prescribed with apixaban and
a reduced dose of DOACs, and were less likely to be given dabigatran
(Table 1). Although the etiology of the preexisting anemia had not been
investigated in the majority of anemic patients at the referring
clinics, renal insufficiency and iron deficiency were the dominant
causes (Table 2).