Atrial Fibrillation: A Scary Update
Rising rates with no clear solution..
Irregularly-irregular, absence of p-waves. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about..
Yes, you’ve guessed it. Atrial Fibrillation. Today I wanted to bring to your attention an awesome study published in the BMJ. This study followed up 3.5 million people who did not have atrial fibrillation and measured the incidence of atrial fibrillation alongside the incidence of its complications such as heart failure and stroke.
The findings are quite concerning.
It found that the lifetime risk of atrial fibrillation has increased from 1 in 4, to 1 in 3 in just over two decades. The incidence of complications such as heart failure and stroke has also increased. This means that AF is quickly becoming a huge issue for patients.
This brings us to primary prevention, the best form of prevention. This describes an effort to prevent the disease in the first instance. Much of public health, motivational interviewing and counselling helps to institute this and as we know that there are a number of lifestyle factors that contribute to AF, it is vital that we help address these.
So what can we do?
Simple. We have to address lifestyle factors and act quickly.
Alcohol and stress are known lifestyle factors that can bring on AF so it is vital we encourage patients to address any issues.
For patients with an infection, we should be try and treat them as soon as possible due to the chance that their illness could set off AF.
Adopt technology. Many patients have a smartwatch which tracks the patient’ heart rhythm. We should encourage patients to act on alerts from such devices so as to diagnose them quicker.
It is difficult to do all of this in our role of clinicians but this is an area which your intervention and advice can really help improve the patients morbidity and potential mortality.
You can read the paper here: https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj-2023-077209
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