Observational studyHeart (British Cardiac Society)2025
Premature ventricular complexes and risk of atrial fibrillation and stroke in patients without structural heart disease.
Observational study in Heart (British Cardiac Society), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Long-term survival in patients with premature ventricular complexes and no structural heart disease.Open heart · 2026Observational
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4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectivePrior studies have suggested that patients with premature ventricular complexes (PVCs) may have an increased risk for atrial fibrillation (AF) and stroke. It is unclear whether frequent PVCs are linked to an increased risk of AF and stroke in patients where structural heart disease (SHD) has been excluded. We aimed to study if PVCs increase the risk of AF or stroke in patients without SHD.
methodsIn this retrospective observational cohort study, we included patients who received a PVC diagnosis at three major hospitals in Stockholm, Sweden. The patients had no history of heart disease, normal results at stress test and echocardiography, and no previous diagnosis of AF or stroke. For each case, four matched controls were obtained from the general population. We used inverse probability weighting (IPW) to control for differences in baseline characteristics.
resultsA total of 751 PVC patients and 3041 controls were included. The median age was 59 years, and 2239 (59%) were women. The median follow-up time was 5.2 years. There was a higher risk of AF among patients in the PVC group compared with the control group in the unadjusted analysis (HR 2.08, 95% CI 1.35 to 3.20, p=0.0009). After IPW, there was no significant difference in the risk of AF (HR 1.44, 95% CI 0.88 to 2.37) or stroke (HR 1.32, 95% CI 0.81 to 2.14) between the PVC group and the control group.
conclusionIn patients with PVCs but without SHD, there was no increased risk of AF or stroke compared with controls from the general population after adjusting for known confounders. However, PVCs were associated with AF in the crude cohort, suggesting that PVCs may be a clinical marker for AF.
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