What Your EP never told you: AF and TAA (Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm)

Thanks, Justin! Good to know! 😉

I made a mistake that I just realized. My Kardia app has the same 3 little dots on it and it has a drop down menu on it. One of them says delete and I got confused and mistakingly put up the message to this forum . So there is no way to either change the message or delete it. My mistake!!!

Thanks for the post, ThisNThat.

Read online that aortic aneurysms generally occur at a rate of 5-10 per 100,000. And that only 25% of these are TAAs. So it would seem that the latter may have an incidence rate of about 1-2.5 per 100,000... so not real common, but who knows what are individual stats are based on the factors discussed here previously plus our own personal / family DNA and the like.

Had a AAA screening two years ago (free through MediCare) which should everything was normal. Will review this subject with my EP at our next visit in a couple of months.

All the best!

/LarryG

We’re even! 😉 Guess we’re all entitled to one goofy mistake! (At least!)

Hi LarryG,
Incidentally, I ran down my latest thoracic ascending aorta dimensions with my EP — who seemed singularly unimpressed. So either my concern is misplaced, or he just doesn’t give a fig! I suspect both.
But good luck to you! 🍀

Hey TNT -- FWIW, in my quarter century of dealing with AF, no cardiologist or EP I've consulted in PA and FL have raised a concern about a TAA. Curious to see how my current EP reacts to the topic at hand this July. My guess: no substantial concern at this point in the research.

I'm being treated for AFIB and Heart Failure for almost 8 years, I'm now almost 70. Last week, I was diagnosed with a 4.5cm TAA, following a CT Scan. How that was not found before is stunning to me. Neither the AFIB or Hear Failure really bothered me; but, I have to say; This TAA is really freaking me out. I live on the remote tropical island of Guam. There are no Heart Surgeons here. So, based on all I can figure out, 2-3 yrs and the sand in my hour glass runs out.

Yes, you would think that with your heart history, someone would have picked up on this!
A 4.5 cm TAA is rather unnerving, although from my experience, may be open to interpretation. If the size was determined from a standard CT and not a gated CT with contrast, there may be some wriggle room there. Different tests often yield different results. Perhaps the aneurysm is not as big as all that. There was about a 3 mm difference between what showed up on my Lung CT and the ostensbly more accurate MRA.
So it may be premature to start counting the grains of sand left in your hourglass! 😙

Here is a recent article 2023 that basically is inclusive that Afib leads to TAA directly or they happen to occur as dual pathologies independent of each other. At least that is how I understand it. "Thoracic aortic aneurysm and atrial fibrillation: clinical associations with the risk of stroke from a global federated health network analysis"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10017617/#:~:text=The%20findings%20regarding%20AF%20and,as%20hypertension%20and%20heart%20failure.
Conclusion
Our retrospective analysis from a large global federated dataset reports a clinical concomitance of AF and TAA. Importantly, in a PSM analysis, an increased risk of ischemic events in patients affected by both TAA and AF was evident, compared to AF alone. Whether this association simply reflects shared risk factors or commonality in pathophysiological pathways, it raises relevant clinical implications that deserve further investigation.

Are you drinking or eating ANYTHING with caffeine??