Assessing stroke risk
When a patient is diagnosed with AF, an assessment should be undertaken to determine the individual’s risk of stroke – the CHA2DS2VASc score is NICE-recommended and widely used in the NHS (see Table 1). The higher the score the higher the risk of an AF-related stroke.
NICE recommends that, if the stroke risk calculation using CHA2DS2VASc is two or more, the patient should be offered anticoagulation. Anticoagulation may also be considered in men with a score of one.
N.B. The maximum CHA2DS2VASc score is 9 rather than 10, as might be expected from simply adding up the columns. This is because the maximum score for age is 2 points, not 3.