Introduction
ATRIAL FIBRILLATION (AF)
The increasing prevalence of atrial fibrillation (AF) and associated morbidity and mortality have heightened the need for optimizing care of AF patients [To study differences in treatment effects in randomized trials it is common to perform subgroup analyses on predefined subgroups. However, these conventional subgroup analyses have limitations, including the risk of false negative results from lack of power and the risk of false positive results due to multiplicity. Further, because patients differ on so many variables that may influence the outcome of interest and the degree of benefit, results from one-variable-at-time subgroup analysis do not yield patient-centered treatment effect estimates [