A study carried out in 2001 by Kaiser Permanente concluded that the incidence of atrial
fibrillation, which now affects 2.3 million Americans, will double over the next 50 years. This
estimate may be conservative; a more recent study found that the incidence of atrial
fibrillation has increased by 70% over the last 15 years. It is also estimated that 12 to 30 per
cent of all cases of atrial fibrillation are of the lone variety. Thus it is likely that as many as
1.5 million people in Europe and North America suffer from lone atrial fibrillation. In other
words, LAF is a common condition and yet it has received only scant attention from the
medical community.
The fact that there is no universally effective pharmacological treatment for LAF and that it is
not life-threatening has led many physicians and cardiologists to classify it as a "nuisance".
As all afibbers well know, LAF is far more than a nuisance! It is a frightening, debilitating
disorder that has wrecked careers and relationships and left many of its victims with a quality
of life that is worse than that experienced by heart attack survivors or patients with congestive
heart failure.
I myself have been an afibber for 12 years now and, like the majority of my fellow afibbers,
have received very little effective help from the medical community in dealing with my
problem. A couple of years ago I decided that if anybody was going to help me it would have
to be myself. So I embarked on an extensive study to find out everything I could about LAF
and to come up with effective ways of dealing with it. The results of my research are
presented in this book.
I decided early on that I would share the highlights with my fellow afibbers as they developed
and, equally important, would provide a forum where we could all share our experiences and
help each other in dealing with the condition. The Afib Bulletin Board became this forum and
has been inordinately successful in meeting its mission. To date, over 7000 postings have
appeared on it and the caring and commitment exhibited by its participants have been
extraordinary. The Bulletin Board though is not only a shining example of a "virtual" support
group that works, but it has also been an invaluable source of ideas and suggestions that
have helped shape this book.
Lone Atrial Fibrillation: Towards a Cure will hopefully serve to
- provide a useful "manual" for novice and veteran afibbers alike;
- provide a foundation for further research by assembling in one place what is known about
LAF;
- debunk the mystery, myths and confusion surrounding LAF by providing the facts liberally
interspersed with personal "journeys" of fellow afibbers;
- discuss and assess the various medical treatment options;
- discuss and assess alternative ways of dealing with LAF;
- report my own original research and speculations about possible cures;
- discuss the latest medical research relating to LAF.
Above all, I hope this book will help instill a feeling of hope and solidarity in the reader. You
are no longer alone in the battle with "the beast".
I make no apologies for including my own ideas and hypotheses as to the nature and
possible cure of LAF. Without such, as yet unproven, ideas there will be no progress. Some
of them will no doubt be proven wrong, but this, in itself, can be valuable. As Thomas Edison
said when yet another light bulb filament failed to work, "Now I know of 1000 ways that do not
work." In the end he did discover a way that worked and so shall we!
This book would not have been possible without the whole-hearted support of my wife Judi
who was instrumental in seeing it come to fruition. Without her word processing skills, editing
advice, and encouragement I couldn't have accomplished it. My deep appreciation also goes
to my friend Frank McCabe who originally inspired me to write this book and whose support
has never wavered. Andy Auerbach, Randy Lewis, Sadja Greenwood, Mark Murphy, and
Erling Waller also deserve special thanks for taking the time to put their afib experiences on
paper and permitting me to share them with you. A double thank you to Erling for taking the
time to review and comment on the final draft in great detail.
I would like to express my gratitude to all the afibbers who took the time to participate in the
LAF surveys and to Fran, Jackie, Erling, Mike F., Jim, Liz, James D., PC, Dave, and the
dozens of other regular visitors to the Bulletin Board. Their enthusiasm, caring and sharing
helped make this book possible. I would also like to thank the subscribers to The AFIB
Report; without their support my research would not have been possible.
Finally I would like to publicly thank the US National Library of Medicine and the US
Department of Agriculture for making their databases available on the Internet as a public
service. Without these freely available resources my research would have been so much
more time-consuming and inconvenient.
Hans R. Larsen
Victoria, BC, Canada
December 2002