December 24th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Opinion
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You may have heard that AF is a tough disease to understand. Questions far outnumber answers.
What causes AF?
Why do some not feel it at all, while others are incapacitated?
What’s the best treatment? Drugs? Ablation? Surgery? No treatment?
Should I take a blood thinner…and which one?
Where should one go for the best AF care?
This short email from a reader captures the essence of AF support group mayhem: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
December 6th, 2011 by MellanieTrueHills in Research
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At the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2011, Dr. John Mandrola presented a poster on gender-specific results of atrial fibrillation ablation in a private practice setting. In this video interview with him about the poster, he mentioned that in his experience women appear to be more challenging to treat with atrial fibrillation ablation and do not appear to fare as well as men from it. In addition, it appeared that women were referred more often for AV node ablations than men.
*This blog post was originally published at Atrial Fibrillation Blog*
December 5th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
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Too much vitamin D can lead to 2.5 times the risk of atrial fibrillation, researchers found.
To determine if there is a correlation between too much vitamin D and increased heart risk, researchers examined blood tests from 132,000 patients in the Intermountain Healthcare Center database. Results were presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November, and appeared at the Intermountain website.
Patients did not have any known history of atrial fibrillation, and all had previously received a vitamin D assessment as part of their routine care. Patients were then placed into categories to compare levels of vitamin D: low (less than 20 ng/dL), low/normal (21-40 ng/dL), normal (41-80 ng/dL), high/normal (81-100 ng/dL), and excess (more than 100 ng/dL).
Patients with low, low-normal, normal and high-normal levels of vitamin D had no increased risk of atrial fibrillation. However, atrial fibrillation risk Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
November 21st, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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I learned a lot from putting together an abstract for a national heart meeting.
- More than just learning how to e-submit, e-upload and e-print a large poster;
- More than what t-tests and chi-squares measure;
- More than learning that females respond differently to AF ablation;
- And surely more than which coffee shop offers the best work place.
Putting this thing together showed me stuff: the process of discovery, it’s role in helping us be better doctors and the difficulties inherent in doing this kind of valuable research in our current system.
So of course…bloggers blog.
First: Many have asked why we bothered doing research? What’s the motivation? Money? Fame? A greater purpose?
It was none of these. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
October 30th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Research
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You don’t want this…
When it comes to the risk of stroke in atrial fibrillation, it pays to be a boy. Sorry, ladies.
An important question came up on my recent post on AF and stroke.
Why does being female give you an automatic point on CHADS2-VASc? I keep seeing it, but I don’t see why that is.
It doesn’t seem intuitive that female AF patients should have more strokes. Why? AF should equal AF.
But it does matter. When it comes to AF and stroke, women are very different.
Here are three references that support the fact that female gender increases the risk of stroke in AF.
–First: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
