Estudo transversal das estratégias de tratamento clínico na fibrila？？o atrial

background: despite the high prevalence and clinical importance of atrial fibrillation (af), there is no brazilian study about the clinical profile of patients with af and the most used treatment strategy (heart rhythm control vs. heart rate control) for them. objective: to assess the most used treatment strategy for af in an outpatient clinic specialized in the management of that disease. in addition, the clinical profile of the population studied was provided. methods: cross-sectional study assessing sequentially, in 167 patients with af, the most used treatment strategy, as well as their clinical profile. a standardized form was used for data collection. the statistical analysis was performed by using the spss？ software, version 13.0. results: in that population at high risk for thromboembolic events (61% had chads2 > 2), 54% of the patients had paroxysmal or persistent af, 96.6% used vitamin k antagonists or acetylsalicylic acid, and 76.6% used beta-blocker (heart rate, 81.2% x heart rhythm, 58.8%; p < 0.05). heart rate control was the most used treatment strategy (79.5% x 20.5%; p < 0.001). a statistical tendency towards more patients with ventricular dysfunction (15.2% x 2.9%; p = 0.06), chads2 > 2 (60.5% x 39.5%; p = 0.07) and heart valve diseases (25.8% x 11.8%; p = 0.08) was observed in the heart rate control group. conclusion: in that population at high risk for thromboembolic events, the heart rate control strategy was the most used.