Half the patients with AFIB also have sleep apnea. Patients with sleep apnea have 4 times the risk of developing atrial fibrillation. How does sleep apnea contribute to AFIB? Potential mechanisms: Changes in intrathoracic pressure during apneic episodes leads to left atrial stretch. Intermittent periods of hypoxemia (low oxygen) and hypercapnia (high carbon dioxide) related…
Tag: sleep apnea
sleep well or die
Lack of sleep has been correlated with disease and death. It seems sleep deprivation modulates the autonomic tone and therefore leads to increase in risk of cardiac arrhythmias. The next study is quite interesting – either too much (>8 h per night) or too little (<7 h per night) of sleep increases mortality. It starts…
obesity and AFIB
Atrial fibrillation has a strong correlation with obesity. A study from Australia showed that if obese patients lost 10% of their weight, they had better outcomes. Another study shows the same. REVERSE-AF was a large, well publicised study with similar results. It seems that a lot of these studies come from Australia, where patients have…