He has received honoraria from Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc as a member of the Data Safety Monitoring Board of its Phase II EXPLORE-AF trial involving an investi- gational anticoagulant for prevention of thromboembolism in patients with atrial brillation. He has received consulting fees from Biotronik, Inc as co-chair of the Steering Committee for the IMPACT clinical trial evaluating the use ambulatory monitoring technology in approved implanted cardiac arrhythmia devices to guide anticoagulation therapy for stroke prevention. He has received a consulting fee from the Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sano Partner- ship for advisory activities related to the use of the platelet inhibitor drug, clopidogrel, for prevention of thromboembolism in patients with atrial brillation. He has been a speaker at CME Symposia that derived partial funding from the following sponsors involved in the development of anticoagulants for potential use in patients with AF: Bayer AG HealthCare, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Sano - Aventis. Dr Lip has served as a consultant for Bayer, Astellas, Merck, Daiichi-Sankyo, AstraZeneca, Sano -Aventis, BMS/P zer, Biotronik, Portola, and Boehringer Ingelheim and has been on the speakers bureau for Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb/P zer, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Sano -Aventis. Drs You, Howard, Fang, Schulman, Hughes, Manning, and Spencer have reported that no potential con icts of interest exist with any companies/organizations whose products or services may be discussed in this article. Role of sponsors: The sponsors played no role in the develop- ment of these guidelines. Sponsoring organizations cannot rec- ommend panelists or topics, nor are they allowed prepublication access to the manuscripts and recommendations. Guideline panel members, including the chair, and members of the Health & Science Policy Committee are blinded to the funding sources. Further details on the Con ict of Interest Policy are available online at http://chestnet.org. 