More than 70-year-old Aunt Wang has a cheerful and lively personality and is well maintained. She is also an activist in the square dance in the community. Neighbors all take her as a health idol. But just a few days ago, Aunt Wang went to a sudden stroke and almost lost her life. Everyone doesn’t understand, without hypertension and diabetes, how did she suffer a stroke?
Only after listening to the doctor did I understand that it was Aunt Wang’s atrial fibrillation for many years.
A healthy [invisible assassin] of the elderly.
The word atrial fibrillation may sound a bit strange, but it is the most common arrhythmia among the middle-aged and elderly people in our country. The prevalence rate is close to 2% among people over 60 years old and as high as 7.5% among people over 80 years old.
Atrial fibrillation is short for atrial fibrillation, Listening to the name can also understand: when the disease attacks, the heart is not beating normally, but vibrating, characterized by very fast heart rate, which can reach 110 ~ 160 times per minute, but the blood flow of the heart is abnormal and prone to thrombosis. Moreover, patients with atrial fibrillation with relatively high risk of thrombosis often have no obvious feeling of palpitation, so atrial fibrillation also has the title of [invisible assassin].
Thrombus formed in the heart, once falling off, is most likely to cause cerebral apoplexy, which is also the greatest harm of atrial fibrillation.
- The risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation is 5 times higher than that in others. If patients with severe atrial fibrillation are not treated, the incidence rate of stroke in 10 years is close to 50%!
Regular physical examination to find out [invisible assassin]
You may have questions, Aunt Wang mentioned earlier has such a serious illness, why don’t you feel it?
This is the special place where atrial fibrillation is relatively special. On the contrary, lighter atrial fibrillation has obvious symptoms, such as paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, with lower risk of thrombosis. Generally, it can return to normal without handling itself, but the feeling of palpitation is more obvious and patients pay more attention to it.
Persistent and permanent atrial fibrillation with high thrombosis risk is severe, but the patient has become accustomed to the state of palpitation, but the symptoms are not obvious.
Atrial fibrillation can be found by doctors’ physical examination and electrocardiogram, so it is very important for the middle-aged and elderly people to have regular physical examination every year and find out [invisible assassins] in time.
There is atrial fibrillation, let the doctor solve it.
Friends who find atrial fibrillation should not always worry about stroke. Atrial fibrillation is controllable and treatable.
Antithrombotic drug
Since atrial fibrillation is easy to cause thrombosis, antithrombotic therapy is very important.
Aspirin and warfarin are common drugs to prevent thrombosis. Warfarin is better than aspirin. When taking warfarin, you must go to the hospital regularly to check the coagulation function according to the doctor’s requirements to avoid the risk of bleeding. There are also some better new anticoagulants such as dapigatran ester and rivaroxaban.
Radical operation
Now more and more patients have received radiofrequency ablation of atrial fibrillation, which is equivalent to using surgery to burn off the focus of atrial fibrillation. Some patients can be completely cured. However, the success rate of this operation for the first time is a little lower by about 50-70%, and many patients need to undergo two or more operations.
There is also an operation to block the pit in the heart that is prone to thrombosis. Although atrial fibrillation has not been cured, it also achieves the purpose of preventing thrombosis.
Although the title [Invisible Assassin] sounds a bit terrible, as long as we know the disease of atrial fibrillation and can have regular physical examination, even if it does come to us, doctors have plenty of ways to deal with it!