Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia, especially among patients with end-stage renal disease. It has been determined that about 10% among patients in the United States on hemodialysis have atrial fibrillation. The percentage is even higher in older patients, who are often diagnosed with this condition during the first year of dialysis therapy.

Atrial fibrillation is usually linked to poor health outcomes, which include higher mortality rates, systemic thromboembolism, excess rates of is chemic stroke, heart failure, myocardial infarction, and kidney disease. So, patients who have atrial fibrillation and end-stage renal disease face increased healthcare costs.

There are many factors which lead to atrial fibrillation, such as non-Hispanic ethnicity, older age, white race, and female sex. Moreover, there are many chronic conditions which can lead to this health issue, such as hypertension, heart failure, and diabetes. These are the factors which increase the risk of atrial fibrillation in patients with kidney failure receiving maintenance dialysis.

There are data which indicate whether the modality used for renal replacement therapy is a risk factor for atrial fibrillation among dialysis patients. So, a group of researchers decided to conduct a study which focused on challenging the null hypothesis of no difference in the incidence of atrial fibrillation between incident patients with end stage renal disease using peritoneal dialysis versus hemodialysis.

The research results showed that a total of 21,709 patients developed incident atrial fibrillation during the first 3 months of dialysis therapy, while 22,241 patients without atrial fibrillation died. The researchers concluded that atrial fibrillation incidence differed between older patients initiating dialysis therapy using peritoneal dialysis versus hemodialysis in the USA. So, patients using hemodialysis had increased atrial fibrillation risk during the first three months. Therefore, there was a similar incidence of atrial fibrillation between patients receiving hemodialysis versus peritoneal dialysis.

Now a days, it is estimated that about 26 million American adults have chronic kidney disease, while 19 to 24 percent of people with chronic kidney disease are also diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. However, it’s worth noting that not everyone with atrial fibrillation will develop chronic kidney disease.

As there is a tendency of these two conditions to occur together, atrial fibrillation can actually worsen chronic kidney disease. The main risk of having atrial fibrillation is experiencing a stroke while having a chronic kidney disease also increases stroke risk. Moreover, atrial fibrillation is more fatal in people who have chronic kidney disease.

Many studies claim that chronic kidney disease may be a risk factor for developing atrial fibrillation. In fact, it was discovered that many people with advanced stages of kidney disease are at an increased risk for developing atrial fibrillation by about 13 percent. As both conditions have many common risk factors, it can’t be determined which condition is the trigger for the other condition. Both conditions share many risk factors, such as hypertension, being older, diabetes, and congestive heart failure. Hence, it’s very hard to determine how much atrial fibrillation and kidney disease are risk factors for each other.

Nevertheless, it has been proven that atrial fibrillation may make kidney disease worse as it causes poor blood flow, which puts more stress on the kidneys. Moreover, atrial fibrillation causes small blood clots to form and go into the kidneys, which increases kidney damage.

So, in order to lower the risk of developing these two conditions, a person has to undertake a number of precautionary steps. It’s best if you do regular exercise, consume a heart-healthy diet, avoid caffeine and alcohol, quit smoking, avoid too much salt, and get your cholesterol into a safe range.