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atrial fibrillation

Can you reverse atrial fibrillation?

Can you reverse atrial fibrillation?

 can be caused by many things, and some of those causes are reversible, which means a patient’s symptoms can improve or stop entirely without additional heart rhythm medications or a surgical procedure.

atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is a condition that results in a change in heart rhythm from the more serious, dangerous, and prevalent regular state (arrhythmia), which does not include premature heartbeat (premature contraction), which is not considered a particularly serious phenomenon.

Constitute a case of atrial fibrillation medical phenomenon is very wide spread, and are more likely to occur with age, so that about 10% of the elderly over the age of 80 years suffer atrial fibrillation.

is a condition in which very fast and irregular electrical activity arises in the right and left atria, and in this case the atria lose their ability to contract regularly as a result of the very rapid and irregular electrical activity. Rapid, uncontrolled contractions, with a frequency of 400 to 600 per minute.

The atrioventricular node (AV node) acts as a guard that prevents the passage of rapid electrical stimuli to the ventricles, but despite its effectiveness, the ventricles’ response to atrial fibrillation is very rapid and irregular, and atrial fibrillation may be a transient or permanent or constant episode.

 symptoms

vary according to the patient’s general health status, the state of his heart, and the speed of the ventricular reaction.

may appear in many different forms, including:

  • Cases that are not accompanied by any symptoms:  The patient does not know the fact that he has atrial fibrillation and is detected only by chance.
  • Cases in which the patient may complain of symptoms such as a feeling of irregular pulse and palpitations.
  • Cases in which the patient may develop other diseases : The most important diseases are:
    • Congestive heart failure.
    • Pulmonary edema.
    • Syncope.

Causes and risk factors

is not always known, but it can be caused by the following health problems:

  • Hypertension.
  • congestive heart failure;
  • Valvular heart disease.
  • Myocardial hypertrophy.
  • Congenital heart problems.
  • hyperthyroidism;

risk factors

that increase the risk of developing atrial fibrillation are:

  • growing old.
  • White skin.
  • Pre-existing heart disease.
  • endocarditis;
  • Having a family history.
  • Diabetes.
  • obesity;
  • drinking alcohol;

Complications

Atrial fibrillation that lasts a long time can impair the heart’s work, possibly causing:

  • Congestive heart failure.
  • Blood clots forming inside the tachycardia.
  • Stroke is a  result of clots entering the arteries of the brain. It is known that the risk of strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation is 5-10 times higher than in other patients who did not have atrial fibrillation.

Diagnosis of atrial fibrillation

The disease is diagnosed using the following:

  • A physical exam, including checking your blood pressure, and asking about your symptoms.
  • Electrocardiogram.
  • Echocardiogram.
  • Chest X-ray.
  • blood tests;

Atrial fibrillation treatment

Atrial fibrillation treatment includes several levels:

1. Anticoagulant therapy

This is done in the majority of patients who have atrial fibrillation that is permanent or appears as an attack.

2. Treatment with drugs that prevent arrhythmia

The patient is given medications to regulate the heartbeat.

3. Cardioversion

In the case of persistent attacks of atrial fibrillation that do not go away despite treatment with medications, and after achieving non-coagulation of blood, in such a case a procedure called cardioversion can be resorted to, and this treatment is performed under anesthesia for a few minutes during which an electric shock is directed to the chest It helps to correct the heart rhythm in more than 90% of cases.

If treatment to prevent blood clotting is not guaranteed, cardioversion can be performed after transesophageal echocardiography to rule out the presence of a thrombus in the atrium that may lead to complications.

Doing this method is a safe and effective procedure to stop atrial fibrillation, but medications are often added to prevent arrhythmias and to prevent fibrillation from happening again.

4. Treatment with drugs that slow down transport in the AV node

It is treated until the ventricular reaction to atrial fibrillation is well controlled, even if the fibrillation cannot be completely controlled, and after the failure of the above-mentioned treatments

5. Excision of the source of fibrillation

Since most cases of fibrillation originate from the lung veins, several methods have been developed for catheter separation, which electrically separate the lung veins.

The success rate in this way are still more of them are low in separation processes in cases of accelerated heart supraventricular (SVT – Supraventricular tachycardia), however, the great progress made in this area in recent years bodes well for the results of this method in the future.

6. A pacemaker

It was found in a small number of patients who developed atrial fibrillation that there is a relationship between the appearance of fibrillation and a slowing of the heart rate, so it often appears at night, this slowdown can be caused by taking medications.

In some of these patients, the problem can be treated with a pacemaker, and today there are many devices that can reduce or even prevent atrial fibrillation, or stop it as soon as it appears.

7. Maze procedure

Labyrinth surgery involves changing the structure of the atria in a way that prevents fibrillation from occurring in them. This surgery is one of the heart surgeries, with all that it means and what it involves, is generally performed on patients who were previously planned to undergo heart surgery for some reason, but There are some cases in which patients undergo this surgery to treat atrial fibrillation only.

Overall, atrial fibrillation is a very common problem, and the methods of treating it have made great progress in recent years and are still, and it is expected that the coming years will witness intensive and vigorous work in research and development and discovery of new methods of treatment, especially in the field of surgical ablation therapy.

Prevention of atrial fibrillation

 can be prevented in the following ways:

  • Eat healthy food rich in vegetables and fruits.
  • Playing sports.
  • Maintain an ideal weight.
  • Quit Smoking.
  • Refrain from drinking alcohol.

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