Don's Home Health Heart Atrial Fibrillation - Afib
last updated 14 Dec 2010

Under Construction


Heartbeat is regulated by electrical impulses.
A normal heartbeat starts in the Sinoatrial (SA) node thru Atrial Ventricular (AV) node then to the bundle of HIS.
The SA node sends a signal at the rate of 60 - 100 BPM. If the AV node detects a problem from the SA node it will generate it's own signal at a rate of 40 - 60 BPM and if it fails the Bundle of HIS will generate a signal also at 40-60 BPM..

In A-fib electrical impulses are generated randomly from many other places called ectopic sites in the atrium. The SA node does not let mose of these signals thru. Those that do come thru are irregular and the ventricle heart rate (what you detect in your pulse) can be less than 60 BPM or more than 100 BPM.

Blood still gets thru to the ventrical but less is pumped out. Blood may stagnate in the atria and can form clots leading to a stroke.

My A-fib sessions were short ( 5 - 12 beats), detected in the Holter Monitor trace from a 24 hour tracking.

When I pushed my BPM to 175 durring a jog you couldn't see the P node pulses because of the compressed nature but it was notmal

Links:
(5) Atrial Fibrillation Anatomy, ECG and Stroke, Animation. - YouTube
(5) EKG/ECG Interpretation (Basic) : Easy and Simple! - YouTube