Our story Afib and stroke

Hello everyone,

I'm glad I found this forum and I would like to share our sad story with a hope to get some advice.

My husband was a healthy guy who always did different kind of sports. 2 years ago while we played tennis he had a black out and almost passed out. They diagnosed him with non obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. They also found on stress test that he turned into Afib after exercise. It turned back to NSR very soon so they sent us home with bunch of information to digest. On holter monitor he did not have AFib.

He stopped exercising except of light walk and had no symptoms so we lived our lifes and forgot about the diagnosis.

In September 2016 he had a stressful time at work and got into Afib that would never convert. First, we did not realize until he started having spells of dizziness again. He also developed bleeding which we did not know where it was coming from. We went back to cardiologist who prescribed warfarin. The GI doctor was concerned about bleeding and scheduled the colonoscopy which never happened because my husband had a stroke. And he is young, fit, no alcohol, good diet, no history of strokes in the family.

Right now he is almost 5 months post stroke, he still has a-fib and it's once every 10 days and lasts 2-3 days, always converts on its on.

His doctor does not support the supplements.

We are ready for the ablation and were also thinking about Watchman device.

The lesson we learned is even if his CHADS score was 0, he still had a stroke.

Prior to the stroke back in September, he had Afib for 3.5 weeks, it converted to NSR on Sunday and he had a stroke on Monday night.

Maybe our story will help someone to make a right decision sooner...

Dear Oxik,

I'm very sorry to hear of your very unfortunate stroke experienced by your husband and indeed your family! Did your husband have an embolic stroke which sounds more likely with the timing after the long 3.5 week AFIB episode, or was is a possible hemmorhagic stroke which I bring up only because you mention he was having bleeding and then one of his docs started him on Warfarin.

Your husband needs an expert evaluation by a top flight EP and at a minimum strongly consider an LAA closure procedure, and very likely an expert ablation too to help end his AFIB , and due to his HTCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) he needs to be under the care of an excellent EP.

And, alas, you are right that folks can occasionally have a stroke risk score of Zero and yet ccasionally have strokes. Our stroke risk scores remain imperfect guidelines. Having AFIB with HTCM world encourage some cardio and EPs to start the patient on OAC therapy even through HTCM is not, per se, included at a stroke risk metric ... neither is having persistent AFIB oddly enough. and yet the vast majority of EPs will put a persistent afibber on OAC.

In any event Oxik, if you would like to discuss your husbands options in more detail then send me your cell number and time zone via the PM (private message) link at the top of each thread and Ill call in the next days as I get settled back in at home from my trip to the ISLAA conference.

The key thing now is making sure your husband is optimally protected from any further strokes and strongly consider LAA closure, especially in light of his bleeding risks, plus getting rid of his AFIB would help in that direction.

Shannon



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2017 05:51PM by Shannon.

Thank you, Shannon.

Yes, my husband had the embolic stroke.

I sent you PM message.