$BSGM According to the American Heart Association, AF increases an individual’s risk of stroke (fourth leading cause of death in the US) four to five-fold. AF is the most common arrhythmia with 2.7 million cases in 2010 in the U.S., forecast to grow to 5.6 million cases by 2050. In the US alone, AF leads to about 600,000 hospitalizations/year with a direct cost of about $6 billion annually and, adding indirect costs, brings the AF total cost to $26 billion.