Closure of ASD: what aggravates the migrainous diathesis?

cardioversion with those of patients who had recurrent atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter.We agree that OSA likely has an important role in atrial fibrillation and other cardiovascular diseases.However, the logistics of conducting sleep studies in large numbers of patients coming to our cardioversion unit are daunting.Furthermore, at this time, we have no reason to suppose that the prevalence of OSA would be higher in newonset vs. recurrent atrial tachyarrhythmias.In both groups, the prevalence of hypertension, which is often accompanied by OSA, was very similar.Arias and coworkers raise an interesting point that is very much in our general area of research emphasis.Nevertheless, the role of OSA in the findings from our study cannot be identified with any great accuracy.Furthermore, although we believe OSA to be very important in the development and prognosis of cardiac and vascular disease, this is a relatively new area of investigation and much needs to be done before cause-and-effect relationships between OSA and atrial fibrillation can be reliably defined.