Figure 1: A flowchart of the enrollment of the study cohort.

A total of 352,656 newly-diagnosed AF patients without history of SCD/VAs were identified from Taiwan NHIRD. One patient without AF and history of SCD/VAs matched for age and gender for each AF patient was selected as the control group. During the follow up, there were 14,221 and 9,360 patients who experienced SCD/VAs among the AF and non-AF groups, respectively. AF = atrial fibrillation; NHIRD = National Health Insurance Research Database; SCD = sudden cardiac death; VAs = ventricular arrhythmias.