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Newly onset Afib

Heart Rhythm Conditions | Last Active: Apr 22 12:51pm | Replies (20)

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Profile picture for kathysavage1954 @kathysavage1954

@gloaming
Hi thank you so much for putting my mind at rest. The most important message I took from your answer was....AF can't kill us.....because when my heart keeps skipping a beat, as it doesn't go more than 30 seconds without missing or skipping a beat, it makes me very worried and I always wonder what it is doing to my heart.
I am 72, low cholesterol and glucose,average weight, interactive thyroid on Eltroxin, blood pressure is normal and my heart never races, it just skips along doing it's own thing !
Over the past 40 years, I have had halter monitors, ecg's, angiograms, blood tests infact all the cardio Drs say it's the electrical activity of the heart, but not serious enough to do an ablation.
I wonder how bad I have to get before they decide I should be medicated or have an ablation?
Does my heart rhythm sound too minor ? Because to me it is very scary and I don't want my heart to stop beating ......
I really sympathise with anyone who has this,because we all only have one heart and we don't know if the skipping is doing damage to our hearts.....
Thank you for reading my message....

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Replies to "@gloaming Hi thank you so much for putting my mind at rest. The most important message..."

@kathysavage1954 When you describe 'skipped beats', that is often not AF but PACs, or 'premature atrial contractions.' They are everywhere, all people, daily. Everybody has 1-30 each day. It's when they become intrusive, with what is called their 'burden', and they run thousands of times each day, and begin to degrade your quality of life, that an electrophysiologist would agree to try to stop them via an ablation procedure. Those more stoic, who endure silently, are unknown to those offering help. So, the squawking patient gets the time in their office and in their cath lab a few weeks later. 😀

PACs often signal an eventual onset of AF. People routinely begin to complain of 'skipped beats', or strong thumps in their chest after a pause, and this is typical of PACs. Many will eventually find themselves in full-blown AF and need an ablation, but so will those whose 'burden' of PACs runs higher than about 3-7% of their daily average, across humans, of about 84,000 beats. The literature I have read says that it is at the 3% rate that morbidity rises markedly. We don't know what your total is per diem, but it might be worth finding out. But the bottom line is, if you are willing to suffer in silence, nobody is the wiser who could help you.