• Posted April 15, 2026

Silent Heart Rhythm Problem Might Triple Risk Of Heart Failure In Seniors

People with a common heart rhythm disorder have a tripled risk of heart failure, even if they aren’t showing any symptoms, a new study says.

Patients whose silent atrial fibrillation was caught during a health screening had nearly 3.2 times higher odds of suffering from heart failure, researchers reported at a meeting of the European Heart Rhythm Association.

This knowledge can help doctors find and treat heart failure (HF) among people with atrial fibrillation (AF), a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart quiver during a heartbeat.

“HF and AF have a bidirectional relationship and accelerate each other’s progression, so it is important to identify and treat HF early in patients with AF,” lead researcher Dr. Gina Sado, a cardiologist and doctoral student at Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, said in a news release.

Stroke is the most serious concern among people with atrial fibrillation. Blood can pool and clot in the quivering upper chambers – the atria – and if such a clot moves out of the heart and reaches the brain, it can cause a stroke.

But atrial fibrillation also is associated with heart failure, a condition in which the heart can’t pump blood well enough to meet the needs of the body, researchers noted. 

“HF has been well studied in patients with clinically known AF, but little is known about the incidence and timing of HF in individuals whose AF has been detected during screening,” Sado said.

For the new study, researchers randomly assigned a group of 75- and 76-year-old patients to receive an ECG heart scan that can detect presence of atrial fibrillation. Others didn’t receive the scan and were used as a control group.

The study took place in two waves:

• In the first wave, more than 6,800 people were screened and 252 diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.

• In the second wave, more than 6,600 people were screened and 152 diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.

During follow-up of five to seven years, 23% of atrial fibrillation patients in the first group and 20% in the second group were later diagnosed with heart failure.

Overall, people diagnosed with atrial fibrillation were 2.9 to 3.2 times more likely to develop heart failure compared to those without the heart rhythm disorder, researchers concluded.

Notably, heart failure was diagnosed early in these patients, within six months of their atrial fibrillation being detected, researchers noted.

“In individuals with screening-detected AF, the risk of developing HF was threefold that of participants without AF and comparable to that of patients with clinically known AF,” Sado said. “These findings suggest that asymptomatic AF is not a benign condition and highlight the need for early detection of both AF and HF.”

Researchers presented these findings Monday at the European Heart Rhythm Association meeting, which took place in Paris.

Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The American Heart Association has more on atrial fibrillation.

SOURCE: European Heart Rhythm Association, news release, April 13, 2026