Calm the Heart to Stop a Stroke?

There’s an electrical storm brewing inside the hearts of more than 2.2 million Americans. And just like lightning, this kind of storm can have devastating consequences.

The “storm”, in this case, is a condition called atrial fibrillation – the most common form of irregular heartbeat in the United States.

And the “lightning bolts” they can produce are tiny blood clots, which can form when blood pools in a heart that’s not beating regularly. When these clots escape the heart, they can travel to the brain. And then, quick as lightning, those clots can cause a stroke or mini-stroke that can kill or disable a person within minutes.

In fact, as many as one in every five strokes in America are related to atrial fibrillation, which is also called AF. That’s more than 150,000 strokes a year. People with AF have a stroke risk that’s up to six times higher than the risk for other people their age — and if they have other health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease, their stroke risk is even higher.

Fortunately, doctors now have a broad range of new — and tried-and-true — ways to treat AF and prevent blood from pooling in the heart.

Besides medicines that can prevent clots and try to calm a racing heart, these options include some new experimental treatments that are being tried at a small number of hospitals, including the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center.

These options include radio-wave treatment called ablation that “zaps” tiny areas of heart muscle to restore normal rhythm; an implanted device that closes off a “blind alley” in the upper left chamber of the heart to keep blood from pooling; and a device that uses a special balloon-camera and a precise laser to treat AF.

U-M is considered one of the nation’s leading centers for the treatment of AF and other heart rhythm problems in adults and kids.

No matter which treatment option a patient chooses, the main goals are to try to calm the racing heartbeat of AF and prevent strokes, says Eric Good, D.O, a U-M doctor who specializes in treating AF and other heart-rhythm problem.

“Atrial fibrillation is a chaotic, electrical rhythm that begins in the top chamber of the heart, called the atrium,” explains Good, an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at the U-M Medical School.

“It involves impulses that whirl around the top chamber, traveling at speeds of 400 to 600 beats per minute in a type of electrical storm that can bombard the lower chambers with rapid signals and result in a very irregular and fast heart beat.” A normal resting heart rate for an adult is around 50-100 beats per minute.

Most AF treatments aim to calm the symptoms that the condition can cause – including a feeling that the heart is racing, shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness and light-headedness. Often, these symptoms can interfere with everyday life for many people with AF.