The global population is aging and the burden of atrial fibrillation (AF) is expected to rise sharply over the next decades [1,2]. Beyond a fivefold increase in stroke risk, individuals with AF frequently experience other adverse cardiovascular events, and all-cause mortality is up to 5 % at 1-year [3-5]. In contemporary AF randomized control trials that tested direct oral anticoagulants, most deaths were cardiac-related (46 %), whereas stroke (6 %) and bleeding (6 %) represented only a small subset of causes of death [6].
