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[...] Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm disorder. One in four middle-aged adults in Europe and the US will develop atrial fibrillation. 2 It causes 20-30% of all strokes and raises the risk of premature death, but outlook improves dramatically with oral anticoagulation therapy. Undiagnosed atrial fibrillation is common and many patients remain untreated. Opportunistic screening is recommended in over-65s, but has time, logistical, and resource demands.
DIGITAL-AF examined the feasibility and effectiveness of screening for atrial fibrillation with a smartphone app medically certified in the EU to detect the condition. The app was made freely available by publishing an access token in a local newspaper. Within 48 hours, 12,328 adults had scanned the token and enrolled in the study.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180825081735.htm
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @10:15PM (2 children)
For years I've known that atrial fibrillation (afib) was an atrium flapping rapidly or spasm-ing, and not giving a good pump to fill the ventricle. But I never understood the connection to clots and stroke. Looking at a few websites on afib, the writers are also missing the connection, they jump from one directly to the other. Maybe it's obvious to everyone but me, but just recently I heard this from a cardiologist which made some sense:
When an atrium doesn't empty reasonably-completely on every stroke, there can be some amount of blood that stays in the atrium, for a relatively long time. Blood starts to clot when it isn't moving frequently, so a little "back water" in the atrium without proper circulation can lead to a clot forming there.
Further comments?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 29 2018, @05:49PM
You've pretty well got it. The other thing is that blood clots form, absent of leukemia or other pathology, for two reasons: damage to tissue and if the blood is moving at a relative slowness. It's not just that it's 'drying out' or clumping on its own - there are different precursor chemicals produced when your body cells are damaged versus blood is running slowly. (the two paths meet up and complete the same ends, just with different initiating enzymes and beginnings of a cascade reaction). The blood doesn't have to stop flowing, either, just an interruption in the free flow pathway. An AFib thrombus is created by the same pathway that a clot is created by arteriosclerosis - the blood is moving too slowly and then the clot gets lodged up against a cardiac or arterial valve or gets jacked up as the arteries narrow down into arterioles.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 29 2018, @05:52PM
I suppose the other thing to note is that in AFib you've still got gravity working on your side and thus the atria do not have to work as hard - even if compression isn't complete an amount of blood will still drain down into the ventricles. The only job of the atria is to pass the blood to the ventricles. But the Ventricles are both fighting gravity and having to push that blood volume through both the respiratory system and the remainder of your body/exterior of your heart. Atria set up the work for the ventricles to do their job. That's why ventricular fibrilations are generally more serious and why your ventricles are massively muscled compared to your atria.
This sig for rent.