Journal article
Cluster randomised controlled trial of screening for atrial fibrillation in people aged 70 years and over to reduce stroke: protocol for the pilot study for the SAFER trial
- Abstract:
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Introduction: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common arrhythmia associated with 30% of strokes, as well as other cardiovascular disease, dementia and death. AF meets many criteria for screening, but there is limited evidence that AF screening reduces stroke. Consequently, no countries recommend national screening programmes for AF. The Screening for Atrial Fibrillation with ECG to Reduce stroke (SAFER) trial aims to determine whether screening for AF is effective at reducing risk of stroke. The aim of the pilot study is to assess feasibility of the main trial and inform implementation of screening and trial procedures.
Methods and analysis: SAFER is planned to be a pragmatic randomised controlled trial (RCT) of over 100 000 participants aged 70 years and over, not on long-term anticoagulation therapy at baseline, with an average follow-up of 5 years. Participants are asked to record four traces every day for 3 weeks on a hand-held single-lead ECG device. Cardiologists remotely confirm episodes of AF identified by the device algorithm, and general practitioners follow-up with anticoagulation as appropriate. The pilot study is a cluster RCT in 36 UK general practices, randomised 2:1 control to intervention, recruiting approximately 12 600 participants. Pilot study outcomes include AF detection rate, anticoagulation uptake and other parameters to incorporate into sample size calculations for the main trial. Questionnaires sent to a sample of participants will assess impact of screening on psychological health. Process evaluation and qualitative studies will underpin implementation of screening during the main trial. An economic evaluation using the pilot data will confirm whether it is plausible that screening might be cost-effective.
Ethics and dissemination: The London—Central Research Ethics Committee (19/LO/1597) and Confidentiality Advisory Group (19/CAG/0226) provided ethical approval. Dissemination will be via publications, patient-friendly summaries, reports and engagement with the UK National Screening Committee.
Trial registration number: ISRCTN72104369.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-065066
- Publisher:
- BMJ Publishing Group
- Journal:
- BMJ Open More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 9
- Article number:
- e065066
- Publication date:
- 2022-09-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-08-16
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2044-6055
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1279621
- Local pid:
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pubs:1279621
- Deposit date:
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2022-11-15
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Williams et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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