Abstract
A short-cut review was carried out to establish whether patients who had been successfully cardioverted after presenting to the emergency department with acute onset atrial fibrillation and who were clinically well could be safely discharged immediately. The reported searches of Medline, Embase and the Cochrane database found 96 papers, of which seven presented the best evidence to answer the clinical question. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of these best papers are shown in table 3. It is concluded that immediate discharge of these patients is a safe strategy.