DOACs now recommended over warfarin to prevent blood clots in people with atrial fibrillation

We are increasingly using DOACs as a first choice for anticoagulation in afib. We are also giving many patients the option to switch from warfarin to DOACs if they are already on warfarin. In general, this change can be made easily. The only patients with afib who should stay on warfarin rather than using a DOAC are those with a mechanical artificial heart valve.

  Watchman vs. Blood Thinners: Alternatives for Patients with Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation

New implant technology designed to thwart stroke shows promise for patients with atrial fibrillation who cannot take anticoagulants. Here’s what potential recipients need to know.

 CABANA: No Outcomes Benefit In First Big Trial Of AF Ablation

Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) produced no significant improvement in clinical outcomes in a large and important new clinical trial. CABANA is the first and long-anticipated randomized controlled trial of AF ablation in the more-than-two-decadelong history of the procedure.

 Can a smart watch save you from a stroke?

Join an ambitious study to detect the most common heart arrhythmia using your smart watch. Contribute your data and save lives.

 If You Look For Atrial Fibrillation You Will Find Atrial Fibrillation

If you look hard to find people who have atrial fibrillation (AF) you will in fact find people who have atrial fibrillation, a new paper published in JAMA shows. But the paper offers no evidence whatsoever that the new diagnosis improves outcomes in these people, though it does find that the diagnosis leads to increased use of drugs and procedures.

Afib stroke prevention: Go set a Watchman?

Studies indicate that the Watchman appears to work about as well as the anti-clotting drug warfarin (Coumadin) for preventing strokes in people with afib.

Apple's Heart Study Is the Biggest Ever, But With a Catch

Now, not for the first time, Apple's attention to user experience has been rewarded: According to a paper outlining the study's design in this week's issue of the American Heart Journal, Apple and Stanford have managed to enroll a staggering 419,093 participants. That makes it the largest screening study on atrial fibrillation ever performed.

Atrial Fibrillation Controversies

Dr. Clare Atzema, Dr. Nazanin Meshkat and Dr. Bryan Au discuss the presentation, etiology, precipitants, management and disposition of Atrial Fibrillation in the Emergency Department. The pros and cons of rate vs rhythm control are debated, what you need to know about Afib medications, and the value of the Ottawa Aggressive Protocol discussed.

Atrial Fibrillation: The Science behind Its Defiance

For many medical professional’s atrial fibrillation may bring to mind a slight twist on a famous quote by late US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: “I can’t explain atrial fibrillation, but I know it when I see it.” Although the pathophysiology of atrial fibrillation (AF) may seem somewhat impenetrable, the arrhythmia itself is diagnostically all but unmistakable, so most medical professionals would indeed “know it when they see it.” And they see it with alarming frequency as AF is such a pervasive problem; it is the most common cardiac arrhythmia across the globe.

Don’t Put That in My Heart Until You’re Sure It Really Works

Many have touted catheter ablation, which can cost well above $20,000, as a “cure” for atrial fibrillation. Yet a new randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of clinical research, has produced disappointing results. The study, called the Cabana trial, found that the procedure was no more effective than much cheaper medications at reducing mortality, cardiac arrest, major bleeding and stroke.

Should Your Watch Monitor Your Heart?

Apple’s new watch can screen for heart problems. But doctors are increasingly worried about the dangers of testing healthy people for disease.

A cautionary note on AF ablation...

It’s time to write an update on AF ablation. Things have changed. The major change is that I am doing many fewer ablations for AF. The reason is we have a better understanding of the disease, or should I say, condition? In the last 2-3 years, good science has changed the way specialists see AF. The old-thinking had AF in its own silo. Your ECG showed AF so you had the disease AF. And if you had a disease, we had a fix–say drugs or ablation.

AF ablation and the hard truths about AF

Atrial fibrillation is a mysterious disease. We know a lot but surely not enough. We look at AF but are we really seeing it? I believe there are hard truths to this disease. Hard in a way that neither patients nor doctors like.

Artery Zapping Little Better Than Drugs In Atrial Fibrillation Patients

Zapping arteries with electric energy, or radio frequency ablation (RFA) was originally hoped to be a cure for AF. Those earlier hopes have been dashed but some experts have held out hope that RFA therapy would be better than drug therapy as initial treatment. Now a new trial offers scant support for earlier use of radio frequency ablation to treat atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation: Anticoagulant therapy to prevent embolization

As a result of embolic risk, chronic oral anticoagulation is recommended for most AF patients. However, such therapy is associated with an increased risk of bleeding and recommendations for its use must take both benefit and risk into account.

Atrial Fibrillation: How Many Times can You Shock the Heart

This may seem like a barbaric and unnecessarily crude and dramatic way to restore normal rhythm, but if patients are properly prepared for this procedure, it is very safe and very effective, resulting in resumption of the normal rhythm 99% of the time.

Atrial fibrillation: management

This guideline covers diagnosing and managing atrial fibrillation in adults. It aims to ensure that people receive the best management to help prevent harmful complications, in particular stroke and bleeding.

Choosing A Non-Drug Treatment for Atrial Fibrillation

This web site will help you to choose a treatment for Atrial Fibrillation (or "AF"). It will describe factors that can affect your choice, and it will help you to gather and organize information you obtain about different treatments and about the doctors who perform them.

Curative Procedure for Atrial Fibrillation uses Minimally Invasive Technique Without Sternal Incision

Drs. Wolf and Schneeberger developed this "mini-MAZE" procedure with Atricure (West Chester, OH) over the past several years. This procedure has been proven effective to cure AF without making a sternal incision-usually 7 inches long in the middle of the chest-without opening the breast bone and without using the heart-lung machine.

Shocking AF — What’s the rush?

If I had just one thing to say to patients and doctors about the disease atrial fibrillation it would be this: Be as scared of AF treatment as you are of the disease.

The best tool for treating atrial fibrillation

Today, I would like to tell you about the most effective way to treat the most common heart ailment, atrial fibrillation (AF). It’s not the novel anticoagulant drugs. Though it’s obvious that having stroke prevention options other than warfarin represents a significant advance. It’s not burning the left atrium with an ablation catheter. Though it’s clearly true that we can ablate AF much more safely and efficiently than we did in past years...

Tis the Season to be Jolly, Unless You’re a Heart!

Holiday Heart is another interesting holiday phenomena. Holiday Heart is an irregular heart rate that classically affects otherwise healthy young people after a drinking binge. The exact causation is unknown, but excessive alcohol (and it generally takes A LOT) consumption somehow screws with the conduction system of the heart and can push it into a pathologic rhythm called atrial fibrillation.

With A-Fib Rhythms, Higher Odds of Stroke

When a lean, healthy, physically active person has a stroke, seemingly out of the blue, the cause may well be a heart rhythm abnormality called atrial fibrillation.