Symptoms may start or stop suddenly. This is because atrial fibrillation may stop or start on its own. The health care provider may hear a fast heartbeat while listening to your heart with a stethoscope. Your pulse may feel fast, uneven, or both. The normal heart rate is 60 to beats per minute. In atrial fibrillation or flutter, the heart rate may be to beats per minute. Blood pressure may be normal or low.
An ECG a test that records the electrical activity of the heart may show atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter. If your abnormal heart rhythm comes and goes, you may need to wear a special monitor to diagnose the problem. The monitor records the heart's rhythms over a period of time. Cardioversion treatment is used to get the heart back into a normal rhythm right away. There are two options for treatment:.
A procedure called radiofrequency ablation can be used to scar areas in your heart where the heart rhythm problems are triggered. This can prevent the abnormal electrical signals that cause atrial fibrillation or flutter from moving through your heart. You may need a heart pacemaker after this procedure.
All people with atrial fibrillation will need to learn how to manage this condition at home. People with atrial fibrillation will most often need to take blood thinner medicines. These drugs tare used to reduce the risk of developing a blood clot that travels in the body and that can cause a stroke, for example.
The irregular heart rhythm that occurs with atrial fibrillation makes blood clots more likely to form. Blood thinner medicines include heparin , warfarin Coumadin , apixaban Eliquis , rivaroxaban Xarelto , edoxaban Savaysa and dabigatran Pradaxa.
Antiplatelet drugs such as aspirin or clopidogrel may also be prescribed. However, blood thinners increase the chance of bleeding, so not everyone can use them. Another stroke prevention option for people who cannot safely take these medicines is the Watchman Device, which has recently been approved by the FDA. This is a small basket-shaped implant that is placed inside the heart to block off the area of the heart where most of the clots form.
This limits clots form forming. Your provider will consider your age and other medical problems when deciding which stroke prevention methods are best for you. A lot of things can make your heart beat faster, like kissing the person you love or watching a scary movie. But sometimes, your heart beats not only faster but also out of rhythm. If you can listen to your heart through a stethoscope, your heart beat should sound something like this, or lub dub, lub dub, lub dub. If you have atrial fibrillation, the top two chambers of your heart contract too quickly, and in an irregular pattern.
Instead of one signal managing the entire contraction of your heart muscle, there are multiple signals, and they may come from more than one place in your heart's muscle.
Though only a few of those signals make it all the way to the bottom of your heart, the result is still confusion and inconsistency.
This results in the quivering or racing sensation that characterizes atrial fibrillation. Your doctor can hear it during an exam, and you can feel it if you know how to take your pulse. Besides the discomfort you might feel from the symptoms of atrial fibrillation , there is a real long-term risk for your health. The disrupted signaling that causes the uneven beating of your heart means that blood isn't moving in and out of your heart correctly.
This raises your risk for a stroke. Hall, who compares the lower levels of the heart to water in a stagnant pond. How your heart sounds is just one part of making an atrial fibrillation diagnosis. The gold standard is the electrocardiogram EKG. This is a test that measures the electrical activity of the heart, creating a graph of your heartbeat. During an ECG, small stickers called electrodes are attached to your arms, legs and chest, and connected by wires to an ECG machine. Every time your heart beats, it produces tiny electrical signals.
An ECG machine traces these signals onto paper. During an episode of atrial fibrillation, your heart rate will be irregular and over beats per minute.
If you have an episode of atrial fibrillation during an ECG, your abnormal heart rate will be recorded. This will confirm the diagnosis of atrial fibrillation and rule out other conditions. But often it can be difficult to capture an episode of atrial fibrillation, so you may be asked to wear a small portable ECG recorder.
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