Early treatment of atrial fibrillation by “drawing a line in the sand”

Atrial fibrillation is a common cardiac arrhythmia with an incidence of about 1% in people under 60 years of age, gradually increasing with age and reaching 10% in people over 75 years of age. According to this estimate, there are more than 8 million patients with atrial fibrillation in China. One of the major hazards of atrial fibrillation is that it causes stroke, and the incidence of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation is six to nearly 20 times higher than that in patients without atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation can lead to thrombosis usually we find some elderly people who do not have high blood pressure or serious arteriosclerosis, but they get stroke and hemiplegia. The main reason for this is the stagnation of blood flow in the fibrillating atria, which over time leads to the formation of blood clots, i.e., thrombi, which reach various parts of the body with the blood circulation and block the arteries causing ischemia and necrosis in the arterial supply organs. If the clot blocks the arteries in the brain, it causes stroke, and if it blocks the arteries in the limbs, it causes necrosis of the limbs, and in serious cases, it requires amputation or even threatens the life. In addition, patients with atrial fibrillation may also have breath-holding, shortness of breath, sitting up in the middle of the night to gasp for air, and shortness of breath during activities, which is due to the long-term irregular and rapid heartbeat, resulting in increased heart load, causing heart enlargement and heart failure. Furthermore, patients with atrial fibrillation also have symptoms such as panic and fatigue, and these symptoms are significantly aggravated during activities, which leads to restricted activities, reduced work efficiency, and reduced quality of life. Atrial fibrillation is a persistent disease in the field of cardiac arrhythmias and has long lacked an ideal treatment method. Traditional treatments are pharmacological and electroshock resuscitation therapy, but both of these methods are symptomatic but not curative, with low success rates and serious toxic side effects such as cardiac arrest, malignant arrhythmias, hyperthyroidism, and pulmonary fibrosis. Current research has established that patients with atrial fibrillation have ectopic lesions within the pulmonary veins and near the openings, which act like machine guns in a bunker, firing continuously or intermittently into the atria and causing atrial fibrillation. As the disease progresses, it leads to atrial enlargement and more disturbed electrical conduction, eventually evolving into chronic atrial fibrillation. In response to this principle, atrial fibrillation can be cured radically if the electrical connection between the pulmonary veins and the left atrium is severed so that the electrical activity of the disordered pulmonary veins cannot be transmitted to the atria. Patients should be reminded that catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation is a complex operation, and the success rate and safety depend largely on the skill and experience of the surgeon, so they should visit an experienced treatment center whenever possible.