CLINICAL AND PROGNOSTIC SIGNIFICANCE OF OBSTRUCTIVE SLEEP APNEA/HYPOPNEA IN PATIENTS WITH NON-VALVULAR ATRIAL FIBRILLATION

In recent years studying relationships between atrial fibrillation and obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea (OSA) has been of great concern. The prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing like OSA in Belarusian population is still unknown, but some foreign studies suggest that OSA can affect 40-50% of patients with AF. The events of OSA can induce hemodynamic changes, oxygen-free-radical production, vascular endothelial dysfunction, structural remodeling of the heart and vessels, what has been considered to cause the development of a substrate for AF, to increase the AF recurrence and to worsen the outcomes of AF. The results of studying cause-and-effect relationships between OSA and AF have been incompletely studied and are controversial, what indicates the necessity for the given literature review.