Screening for Atrial Fibrillation

In this video, unlike the ones that I've uploaded so far, I'm not going to talk about my personal history very much. I want to talk more about screening for AFib and related to that the options for monitoring AFib and sinus rhythm in people who have been diagnosed and treated for AFib and are in or out of sinus rhythm. The one thing that struck me when I was diagnosed was that I, and I think almost the majority of the people I know, knew all about cholesterol. We've all heard about what is a high level of cholesterol, we've all heard about good and bad cholesterol, we've all heard about statins with one end of the medical profession suggesting that statins should be in the water supply, and the other end being a bit more sceptical. But what I didn't know, and certainly talking to friends, is the prevalence of a fib in the population, what it means, and what are the risk factors. So, if we look at the total population, a small percentage, something of the order of about 2.8%, less than 3% of the total population are thought to have a VIB, of which a third, which is quite a large number, a third are undiagnosed and two thirds are diagnosed. estimates are of course difficult to be certain about because knowing what the population is who are undiagnosed does depend on research done on random samples to check whether people have AFib or not and there is not a lot of that around. I think the best study is Swedish. So we have a low incidence in the population as a whole however the incidence of AFib rises significantly with age and 80% of people with AFib in the UK are 65 or older and these people are at a significantly raised risk of strokes and heart attacks because AFib if not treated in terms either of getting you back into sinus rhythm but more importantly using anticoagulants like Warfarin or in my case the Pixaban. If you don't have that treatment you're always at risk that the blood pools in the heart chamber and clots and these clots if they travel to your brain causes stroke if they travel into a major part of the heart you will get a heart attack. So this is a risk factor which I think is relatively unknown in the population so I would like to make a plea for more knowledge about AF, a wider understanding of it but I'd also like to suggest that there could be simple and easy screening. I believe that some of the hesitation on that will be because patients have to have an ECG and that involves a complicated machine with electrodes on your body. However, thanks to new technology there are available something like that and if you hold it like that and you have the correct app on your phone it will give you an ECG which you can then email to your doctor, your consultant or whoever is looking after your AFib. So in terms of people diagnosed and being treated who need to keep an eye this is a very useful tool. There are two available, one is the first one is the AFib, the Cardio Mobile. Cardio mobile made by AliveCore. They were the first on the market, they cost around £100 and they are primarily focused, although they do allow you to use it on the other smartphones, the Android phones that they have heard of. If they haven't heard of your Android phone they totally wash their hands of you, blame anything faulted with it on your phone which is complete rubbish. So after customer care with this product in my opinion, in my experience I suggest you avoid them at all costs although I know that at the Hammersmith Hospital it is widely used, nurses, doctors have them and they use their phone, they check whether you're in sinus or afib without having to go through the procedure of an ECG with electrodes all over your body. Now so it's a good thing however there is a better one in my opinion it's cheaper it is marketed as compatible with iPhones and Androids without question and it is called snap ECG all one word. Google it Amazon sell it and it comes out at just under 80 pounds. So I think that if doctors in their surgery had one of these handheld devices they could with their smartphones screen patients over the age of 65 they call them in for cholesterol blood tests and whilst they are typing in the request on their computer the patient could hold one of these things it takes 30 seconds and you get out an ECG diagram which a doctor can read. I would however also say that you can YouTube how to read your ECG. At first when I was doing this I just used to email the registrar who was in charge of the special ablation research program that I'm part of but I then went on YouTube and whilst I don't think I could pass a medical exam in ECG reading I know more or less what to look for how to tell whether you're in sinus rhythm and I know a bit about the different waves I mean my P wave for example the first little one is a bit attenuated. So this video is to make a plea for screening because there are a lot of people out there with AFib undetected either asymptomatic or like me thought their symptoms slight exercise intolerance was something to do with not doing enough exercise when in fact it was my AFib. If you already have Afib and it's being treated and would like to keep an eye on it I strongly recommend buying one of these handheld devices and going on to YouTube and you'll be able to read it yourself and I would recommend Snap ECG not the Kardia Mobile AliveCore model. You save yourself £10 and you get better customer care.