The American journal of cardiology
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Review Meta Analysis
Meta-analysis of digoxin use and risk of mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation.
There is an ongoing debate on the safety of digoxin use in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). To address this issue, the investigators assembled a synthesis of the available evidence on the relation between digoxin and all-cause mortality in patients with AF. PubMed and the Embase database were systematically searched to identify all eligible studies examining the association between digoxin use and the mortality risk in AF. ⋯ When the AF cohort was grouped into patients with and without heart failure, the use of digoxin was associated with an increase in mortality in patients with and those without heart failure, and no significant heterogeneity was seen between the groups (p >0.10). In conclusion, the results suggest that digoxin use was associated with a greater risk for mortality in patients with AF, regardless of concomitant heart failure. A well-powered randomized trial is necessary to reveal the true effect of digoxin.
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The number of citations an article receives is an important indication of its impact and contribution to the clinical world. There is a paucity of literature concerning top article citations in cardiology. The main objective of this investigation was to bridge this gap and to provide readers a practical guide in evaluating the cardiovascular literature. ⋯ Contrary to bibliometric analyses published in other medical fields, the largest subset of the cardiology articles (n = 42) was published in the 5-year period from 2006 to 2010. General medical journals such as The Lancet (n = 4) and The New England Journal of Medicine (n = 1) contributed only 5 articles to the list despite their extremely high impact factors. In conclusion, our analysis provides an insight on the citation frequency of top cited articles published in cardiovascular medicine to help recognize the quality of the works, discoveries, and the trends steering cardiology.