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	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In their retrospective follow-up study of all patients attending a hospital anticoagulant clinic for atrial fibrillation, Copland and colleagues¹ found that the elderly population has both good anticoagulant control and a low incidence of hemorrhage while receiving warfarin therapy. Although interesting, from our point of view, these data cannot support the authors' general conclusion in favor of anticoagulant use. In fact, in the "Patients, Materials, and Methods" section, the authors note that prosthetic heart valve replacement was the only exclusion criterion, implicitly admitting the possibility of "a selection bias at the level of referral to the clinic."

We would like to comment on this bias with our recent data,^2-4 reporting that global cognitive, functional, and comorbidity status strongly influence the assignment to aspirin or anticoagulant therapy in the elderly population both in the hospital and in the community. In particular, we also found that among general practitioners in the community, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Trends in the prevalence of diagnosed atrial fibrillation, its treatment with anticoagulation and predictors of such treatment in UK primary care
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Heart 2006;92:1064-1070.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT