Atrial Fibrillation and the Risk of Heart Attack

Human heart consists of 4 chambers: two upper ones called the atria (the left and the right atria) and two lower ones called the ventricles (the left and the right ventricles). When the upper chambers of the heart contract irregularly and at very high frequency, then atrial fibrillation (a certain type of arrhythmia) is diagnosed. This condition is the most common type of arrhythmias; it affects millions of people all over the world, thus about 7 million people in the United States and Europe suffer from it. Atrial fibrillation is not a benign disorder – it’s associated with a doubling risk of dementia and death, 3-fold higher risk of heart failure and 5-fold higher risk of stroke.

The main symptom of atrial fibrillation is rapid and irregular heart rate over 140 beats per minute that can be perceived as palpitations. Other symptoms of atrial fibrillation include:

• Dizziness
• Fatigue
• Confusion
• Weakness
• Chest pain
• Shortness of breath
• Lightheadedness
• Reduced ability to exercise
• Severe palpitations accompanied by the sensation of discomfort in the chest
• Low blood pressure

However, some people with this heart disease experience no symptoms and thus can be unaware of their condition until a routine medical check-up.

Atrial fibrillation is often age-related. The older the person gets, the more his or her risks to develop this condition are. Only in extremely rare cases this heart disorder develops in young patients, it is often conditioned by other cardiovascular disorders. Sometimes the real causes leading to atrial fibrillation cannot be established. The most common causes of atrial fibrillation include:

• Hypertension
• Ischemic heart disease
• Congenital heart defects (congenital defects of the walls of the heart, of its valves or blood vessels)
• Mitral insufficiency (abnormal leakage of blood from the left ventricle to the left atrium through the mitral valve)
• Cardiomyopathy
• Pericarditis (inflammation of the pericardium)
• Previous heart surgery (it considerably increases the risks for the development of atrial fibrillation)
• Heart attack
• Overactive thyroid gland
• Sick sinus syndrome
• Drug or alcohol abuse
• Some types of viral and bacterial infections
• Sleep apnea, etc.

If atrial fibrillation isn’t properly controlled, it makes the heart work less efficiently and this can lead to heart failure, a condition in which the heart cannot pump blood through the body with proper efficiency. Sometimes atrial fibrillation can be one of the causes of heart attack, although it’s not too common. Actually, recent meta-analysis research has shown that atrial fibrillation seems to be linked to increased risk of subsequent myocardial infarction in people with coronary heart disease.

Atrial fibrillation can have serious consequences for cardiovascular health, if untreated it can provoke various complications including blood clots. Actually, it’s one of the most common complications of this condition. In the case of atrial fibrillation the blood doesn’t flow from the upper chambers of the heart (atria) properly and flows very quickly which makes the risk of blood clotting very high.
The resulting blood clots can then get into the ventricles and eventually into the lungs or travel in the general bloodstream. In the end, they can get into the brain arteries and cause them to clog.