When Tarran Savage - an apparently healthy 22-year-old - fell to the ground while playing indoor soccer, he was clinically dead.
He could not have known he had a condition which made his heart a ticking timebomb, at risk of cardiac arrest at a raised heart rate.
If it wasn't for the cool heads of his team mates and bystanders, as well as a defibrillator located on site, he would not have left Kaleen Indoor Sports Centre alive.
A new heart surgery service available for Canberra's public patients for the first time is already saving lives.
Canberra Hospital has recruited an internationally renowned cardiologist, Dr Rajeev Kumar Pathak, to start an electrophysiology service to help patients with abnormal heartbeats.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150316135612.htm
Obese patients with atrial fibrillation who lost at least 10 percent of their body weight were six times more likely to achieve long-term freedom from this common heart rhythm disorder compared to those who did not lose weight, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session.
Long-term sustained weight loss appears to be associated with significant reduction of atrial fibrillation (AF) burden with improved maintenance of sinus rhythm in obese patients, new data presented at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Scientific Sessions 2015 indicate.
In addition, obese patients with AF who lost at least 10% of their body weight appear to be six times more likely to achieve long-term freedom from AF compared with those who did not lose weight.
Although previous studies have shown that weight loss can reduce the burden of AF, it was unknown if the effect was sustained, if there is a dose effect or if weight fluctuations mattered. This current study is the first to track the long-term effects of weight loss and the degree of weight fluctuation on AF burden.
Results suggest that patients who lost more weight and maintained a more stable weight over 4 years showed marked reductions in AF burden and severity — the study’s primary endpoints.
Source: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/835882
Sometimes big things come in small packages.
The Aggressive Risk Factor Reduction Study for Atrial Fibrillation and Implications for the Outcome of Ablation (ARREST-AF) may be a small study, but its findings provide big gains in our understanding of the link between AF and cardiometabolic risk factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, alcohol excess, and sleep apnea.
I briefly wrote about this study when it was presented at the Heart Rhythm Society of America 2014 Scientific Sessions in May, mostly by telling you what Dr John Day, president of the HRS, had to say about lifestyle and AF. (He said big things.) Now that ARREST-AF has been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology,[1] I wanted to revisit this practice-changing study. I believe ARREST-AF heralds the beginning of a new era in the care of patients with AF.
