Study design and patient population.
The study procedures were reviewed and approved by the Institutional
Research Board (IRB) of Medical College of Wisconsin. In this
single-center retrospective study, AF patients with LAA thrombus were
identified through a query of ICD-10 codes within the electronic medical
record system. This search identified patients with the diagnosis of
non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF), a TEE study performed between
February 1, 2014, and December 31, 2020, and a diagnosis of intracardiac
thrombus. In this manner 216 subjects were identified. Two study
cardiologists (MB and AW) manually reviewed the TEE images and medical
records for these subjects. Subjects with intracardiac thrombus not
contained within the LAA or thrombus unconfirmed by the two study
reviewers, and those for whom imaging did not permit orthogonal
measurements of the left atrial appendage ostial diameters were excluded
from the study. A total of 79 patients constituted the final thrombus
cohort (Figure 1).