Atrial Fibrillation Tutorial

mmAtrial Fibrillation TutorialAtrial Fibrillation TutorialWestby G. Fisher, MD, FACCPrint This PageDirector, Cardiac Electrophysiology(Requires Adobe Acrobat Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Evanston, IL, USAReader)(Last updated 13 Mar 2007)INTRODUCTIONSo your doctor tells you you have atrial fibrillation. A myriad of questions circle through your head: What is atrial fibrillation? Where did it come from? Why do I need to be on warfarin (Coumadin®)? What options are there for treating this heart rhythm disorder? Will a pacemaker correct or control this rhythm. Do I need a surgical procedure? My doctor mentioned I also have atrial flutter; how is this different from atrial fibrillation? Etc., etc. After treating many patients with atrial fibrillation, I can tell you that there is only one thing that is true: everybody's a bit different: different in how they perceive their atrial fibrillation, different in how they respond to medications, and different in what I recommend to them regarding therapy. This tutorial is basically what I tell patients in my practice about atrial fibrillation. I find it often takes an hour or so to explain the intricacies of the disease, and many leave forgetting much of the information that I told them. So I decided to produce this series of webpages to serve as a reminder of our conversation, and to serve as a reference for others. More and more I find patients bringing me articles they found on the internet, and so, ...