{"id":6012,"date":"2011-05-20T12:40:39","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T17:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=6012"},"modified":"2020-07-02T18:11:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:11:55","slug":"atrial-fibrillation-after-aortic-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/05\/20\/atrial-fibrillation-after-aortic-replacement\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;What Causes Atrial Fibrillation After Heart Valve Surgery?&#8221; Asks Ted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, at the <em>American Association for Thoracic Surgeons<\/em> meeting, Ted sent me a great question about atrial fibrillation after heart valve surgery. He writes, &#8220;Dear Adam, I had my aortic valve replaced. The new valve is a pericardial tissue heart valve. What causes A-Fib after surgery? I had one incident of A-Fib while in the hospital followed by four more incidents two weeks after surgery. Thank you! Ted\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To help Ted, I asked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Niv-Ad-Takoma+Park-Maryland.php\">Dr. Niv Ad<\/a>, the chief of cardiac surgery at Inova Heart &amp; Vascular Institute in Falls Church, Virginia, this exact question. So you know, a key research initiative of Dr. Ad&#8217;s practice focuses on atrial fibrillation. Here is Dr. Ad&#8217;s video response to Ted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L73AQaCS3do\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I want to thank Ted for his question. Plus, I have to offer a special thanks to Dr. Niv Ad for his continued support of this patient and caregiver community. Dr. Ad has really helped transform this resource from an <em>ordinary website<\/em> into an <em>extra-ordinary community<\/em>. Thanks Dr. Ad!!!<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who are hearing impaired, I have provided a written transcript of this video interview below.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 Hi, everybody.\u00a0 It\u2019s Adam and we are coming to you from the AATS in Philadelphia.\u00a0 I\u2019m thrilled to be standing next to Dr. Niv Ad who is the Chairman of Cardiac Surgery at Inova Heart and Vascular Institute in Falls Church, Virginia.\u00a0 You might recognize him from the patient reunions that he holds on an annual basis.\u00a0 It\u2019s a\u00a0 great thing that you do for the patients.\u00a0 And we have a question that comes in from Ted. Ted writes, \u201cDear Adam.\u00a0 I had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/aortic-valve-replacement-surgery.php\">my aortic valve replaced<\/a>.\u00a0 The new valve is a pericardial tissue heart valve and I\u2019ve experienced afib after surgery.\u00a0 The question is:\u00a0 What causes afib, atrial fibrillation, after surgery?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/inova-patient-reunion-reception.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"265\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/patients-chatting.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"293\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Dr. Ad:\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a very good question.\u00a0 Atrial fibrillation after open heart surgery in general and valve surgery in particular is a very common problem with an instance of anywhere between 20, 22 %, about 50%.<\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 Wow.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Ad:\u00a0 And the etiology is not so clear to us and may go all the way from inflammation of the surgery to some more a basic mechanism related to heart function and possibly myocardial cell function that we published heavily about in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 I guess the follow-up question would be is if &#8211; when this does occur, and it sounds regular from your comments, how do you then treat it?\u00a0 What\u2019s done?<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Ad:\u00a0 So, when patients experience atrial fibrillation after surgery and the big question is how long it takes before they convert back to sinus rhythm.\u00a0 If it\u2019s anywhere between a couple of minutes to a few hours, then we usually don\u2019t treat it.\u00a0 However, if it\u2019s looks more sustainable and patients are symptomatic, we treat it with anticoagulant drugs and if it goes for over 18 hours, we start anti-coagulation (Coumadin).\u00a0 If anticoagulant drugs are not helping, then many patients do have to have electrical cardioversion.\u00a0 You can have anywhere between one to a few events and the good news now is that in 99% of the cases, it just goes away as the time passes.\u00a0 By six weeks this is minimal incidence.<\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Well, Dr. Ad, thank you so much for everything that you\u2019ve done.\u00a0 I really appreciate it.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been a great contributor to the site, really helped us educate all the patients out there and their caregivers.\u00a0 Thanks again for all you do.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atrial-fibrillation-afib"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}