2023-08-28 17:29:19
Researchers at the University of East Anglia in Britain have developed a tool to identify patients at risk of developing an irregular heartbeat, a condition known as atrial fibrillation. Although this condition is not life-threatening, it increases people’s risk of “stroke” by up to 5 times.
In a study published Monday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, researchers found 4 specific factors that can predict which patients will suffer from atrial fibrillation in the future.
Usually, patients who have had a stroke undergo multiple tests to determine the cause of the stroke, as this can affect the treatment they receive in the long term.
These include long-term monitoring of the heart rhythm using a small, implantable device called a “heart monitor” and an ultrasound scan of the heart, called an “echocardiogram” to show how blood flows through the heart and its valves.
The research team collected data from 323 patients in the east of England who had a stroke of unknown origin. They analyzed medical records as well as data from long-term heart rate monitors, and they also studied the patients’ echocardiograms.
The team was able to identify patients with atrial fibrillation up to three years following their stroke, and then proceeded with a comprehensive evaluation to determine whether specific criteria were associated with atrial fibrillation.
This led them to identify four factors associated with the development of atrial fibrillation that were consistently present in patients with arrhythmias: advanced age, elevated diastolic blood pressure, coordination problems, and function of the upper left chamber of the heart. The team then developed a tool that doctors can use to predict who will develop atrial fibrillation in the next three years and who is therefore at increased risk of another stroke in the future.
“Identifying people who are most at risk of atrial fibrillation is very important, and an easy tool that any clinician can use in clinical practice, to provide more targeted and effective treatment to these patients,” says Professor Vassilius Vassiliou, from the University of East Anglia Medical School and the lead researcher of the study. . He added to Asharq Al-Awsat that this condition requires specific treatment with anticoagulants, which are drugs that slow down the process of blood clotting at normal speed, to reduce the risk of stroke in the future, as atrial fibrillation was detected in more than a third of patients following a stroke.
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