Clinical implication of the patient's disease awareness and adherence to medications in patients undergoing atrial fibrillation ablation

Background The effects of the patient's disease awareness on the management of postablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) are unknown. Methods One hundred thirty‐three AF patients undergoing an initial ablation were given a disease awareness questionnaire with a score of 16 points (8 points about AF in general and 8 points about oral anticoagulants) for the Jessa Atrial Fibrillation Knowledge Questionnaire (JAKQ) before and 1‐year‐after ablation. We divided them into the poor disease awareness group and good disease awareness group according to the median value (75%) of the total JAKQ score about AF in general, and compared the baseline patient characteristics and the 1‐year changes in the JAKQ score, medication adherence, blood pressure, laboratory data, echocardiographic parameters, and AF/atrial tachycardia (AT) recurrence rate between the two groups. Results Forty‐two (31.6%) patients were classified as having poor disease awareness (