TY - JOUR
AU - Conti, C. Richard
AB -  In recent years several articles have been written about the use of transesophageal=hocardiographyWl to identify patients without evidence of thrombi in the atria or atrial appendage. The rationale for using TEE was that it might be appropriate to cardiovert these patients electrically from atrial fibrillation to sinus rhythm without anticoagulation. I thought thls was a good idea. It sounded quite logical, as it might decrease the number of hospitalization days as well as the hazard of anticoagulating patients with coumadin. Based on this latter point, they recommend therapeutic anticoagulation for all patients with atrial fibrillation of greater than two days’ duration from the time of cardioversionfor a total of four weeks, even in the absence of thrombus on TEE. They conclude that the role of TEE may be to enableearly cardioversion if atrial thrombosis is excluded, and to identify those with atrial thrombi so that the procedure can be postponed in order to carry out the usual 3 4 weeks of proper anticoagulation. Embolic Events after “Normal TEE” Black and colleaguesexamined the clinical and echocardiographic fmdings in patients with embolism after cardioversion of atrial fibrillation despite exclusion of atrial thrombi by TEE.3 In their study, 17 patients had 
TI - Atrial fibrillation, transesophageal echo, electrical cardioversion, and anticoagulation
JF - Clinical Cardiology
DO - 10.1002/clc.4960171202
DA - 1994-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/atrial-fibrillation-transesophageal-echo-electrical-cardioversion-and-33PrpXxBAm
SP - 639
EP - 640
VL - 17
IS - 12
DP - DeepDyve
ER -