Introduction
Left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) with a Watchman device (WD) (Boston Scientific, St. Paul, MN) is an alternative strategy to oral anticoagulation for embolic stroke risk reduction in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF).
There are rare case reports of WD- associated infection [1-3]. While the original Watchman trials reported on adverse outcomes broadly, they did not directly report on the incidence of WD-related infections or outcomes in the setting of blood-stream infections (BSI) [4-6].
We sought to evaluate the incidence, risk factors, and outcomes for WD-associated infections from a single-center cohort over a 14 year period.