• Question: what is atrial fibrillation and can you die from it ?

    Asked by anon-240737 to Elspeth on 9 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Elspeth Keating

      Elspeth Keating answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      This really isn’t my area of expertise, I work with materials in transport applications – nothing to do with medicine!
      From what I can gather from a quick bit of research, atrial fibrillation (AF) is, put simply, an irregular heartbeat. It seems that it is an irregular heart beat due to a disease, or as a symptom of a disease, and can lead to things such as strokes or heart attacks, so yes, in short, it can kill you. I think it cannot kill you directly, but can trigger other things that will kill you.

      Sorry that I cannot give you more of a detailed answer, other than my dad’s pacemaker which regulates his heart rate, I have no experience with this.

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