Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Support Group
Atrial fibrillation (AF or afib) is an abnormal heart rhythm (cardiac arrhythmia) which involves the two small, upper heart chambers (the atria). Heart beats in a normal heart begin after electricity generated in the atria by the sinoatrial node spread through the heart and cause contraction of the heart muscle and pumping of blood.
I thought everyone was saying you don't die from afib, but rather you can from a stroke. What am I missing here?
New weekend effect seen in cardiac care
Patients hospitalized on weekends with atrial fibrillation have higher death rates. A national initiative helped eliminate the weekend gap in heart attack care.
By Kevin B. O'Reilly, amednews staff. Posted July 30, 2012.
PRINT|E-MAIL|RESPOND|REPRINTS| SHARE Research into many kinds of hospital care has found disparities in the morbidity and mortality outcomes for patients who seek treatment during the week compared with those unfortunate enough to get sick on weekends. This weekend effect has been demonstrated in hospital treatment of pulmonary embolism, gastrointestinal bleeding, diverticulitis and more.
Now a study of nearly 90,000 U.S. hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation has found another gap in weekend care. About 20% of the irregular heart-rhythm patients studied were hospitalized over the weekend, and 1.1% of these patients died. That is compared with 0.9% of the patients admitted during the week. After adjusting for hospital and patient characteristics and patient comorbidities, the weekend patients had a 24% higher chance of dying compared with weekday patients.
More here:
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/07/30/prsb0730.htm
New weekend effect seen in cardiac care
Patients hospitalized on weekends with atrial fibrillation have higher death rates. A national initiative helped eliminate the weekend gap in heart attack care.
By Kevin B. O'Reilly, amednews staff. Posted July 30, 2012.
PRINT|E-MAIL|RESPOND|REPRINTS| SHARE Research into many kinds of hospital care has found disparities in the morbidity and mortality outcomes for patients who seek treatment during the week compared with those unfortunate enough to get sick on weekends. This weekend effect has been demonstrated in hospital treatment of pulmonary embolism, gastrointestinal bleeding, diverticulitis and more.
Now a study of nearly 90,000 U.S. hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation has found another gap in weekend care. About 20% of the irregular heart-rhythm patients studied were hospitalized over the weekend, and 1.1% of these patients died. That is compared with 0.9% of the patients admitted during the week. After adjusting for hospital and patient characteristics and patient comorbidities, the weekend patients had a 24% higher chance of dying compared with weekday patients.
More here:
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/07/30/prsb0730.htm
But there are other things that can happen on weekdays. Of course, many people in the ER with AFIB may have not known they had it, may be having the beginning of a stroke, may get a rhythm drug that can be fatal if not administered or monitored properly, may have a crazy high heart rate they had for a long period of time, may be very old and/or frail, may have related conditions that are far worse than AFIB, maybe "just died"..., maybe were suffering from some serious symptom of an ablation they ignored (you know the list of possible adverse reactions), etc...
I think we're all in denial if we think that we're safe in assuming that you may not die from AF or complications resulting from AF.
You can die from AF.
Again a question of semantics. If it's not directly from AF what difference does it make if it still happens?
In addition many hospitals are not cardiac/stroke prepared and when something gets complicated they may move the patient to another facility. Sadly, it might be too late at that point.
I was in one ER and fortunately I was not in AF at that time, had I been I'm not quite sure what may have resulted from my stay as they really seemed to have no clue about what was going on.
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