congestive heart failure

If one is in permanent Afib how do you know when your heart will finally wear out to the point of CHF? Are there tests to tell how close it's getting?

Andrea - the simplistic answer is that during an ultrasound of the heart, the Ejection Fraction number is measured... that's the ventricular pumping capacity. The ultrasound also shows enlargement of the heart chambers which would be indicative of signs of CHF. Prior to my ablation, an annual heart ultrasound was part of the regular workup and I'd think it would be standard for anyone with permanent AF to monitor such concerns as well.

Additonally, all of the nutritents that support heart health and function are important to be taking.
See the Strategy
[www.afibbers.org]
and be very mindful of the sodium/potassium factor mentioned in CR 72.
[www.afibbers.org]

Jackie

Andrea:

A blood test of BNP, if high, will be an indication of heart failure. BNP is Brain Naturetic peptide.

Liz

Andrea,

A key question is heart rate. If it is well controlled, then this should be less of an issue.

George

EF as Jackie posted.

Andrea,
I just had an ultrasound, my Cardio does one every 6 months..I didn't know what it was for until I ask the girl in the coumadin clinic how my blood test and ultrasound came out and she said it was fine...the BNP was 96 and I guess your really have to watch out if it is 100 or more..she said he was checking for heart failure...I don't know how good 96 is, but will see my Cardio in a couple of months, so maybe I'll find out then
I don't know if the blood test or the ultrasound determines the heart failure..I never ask enough questions....
Take care.........Nel

In late 2004 or early 2005 I posted a number of messages detailing: (1) how permanent a-fib leads to physical heart geometry change; (2) which can affect the physical geometry of the heart valve support structure; which (3) can cause valve leakage.

In those messages, the (misleading) medical terminology used to describe heart valve leakage was explained (so-called mild leakage is actually very serious); as well as giving links to studies describing the statistical long term consequences of mild heart valve leakage on death rate (a degenerative cascade typically reducing remaining lifetime in half).

Finally, I presented a simple way of estimating "what ifs": (1) how an arbitrarily chosen ablation success rate; (2) compares to an arbitrarily chosen consequence of valve leakage on death rate; which (3) showed that ablation, even with an assumed very low success rate, was always the far better choice, when there was any hint of heart valve deterioration.

If you have any concerns about CHF I suggest you go back into the archives and review those messages.

The "what if" calculation caused me to aggressively seek an ablation with the most successful EP, and the result was as expected; a return to NSR cause my heart valve leakage to cease. In 2005 there were others who reported the same result, but to my knowledge there has been no further follow-up here of this aspect of continuous a-fib.