(WYTV) – Doctors call an irregular heartbeat atrial fibrillation, or AFib, which can cause poor blood flow. That can lead to blood clots, strokes or outright heart failure.
Medication is the first treatment to manage intermittent AFib.
How do you know if you have it? If it feels like your heart flip flops or skips a beat, see your doctor.
“If we wait too long to address atrial fibrillation, it is more difficult for us to manage it,” said Dr. Oussama Wazni, with the Cleveland Clinic.
If medication doesn’t work, doctors will try ablation — a procedure in which doctors make small burns or freezes to cause some scarring on the inside of the heart. That, in turn, helps break up the electrical signals that cause irregular heartbeats.
The Cleveland Clinic studied this procedure and found it might be best as the first treatment, even before turning to drugs.
The Food and Drug Administration regulated this study, which means it could change how doctors treat AFib in the future.
