Vice-President Dick Cheney went to the hospital this afternoon after his doctors detected an abnormal rhythm to his heartbeat. He was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, meaning that the upper chambers of his heart, the atria, weren’t beating properly, and doctors prepared to give his heart an electric shock to restore its proper rhythm.
Atrial fibrillation isn’t an immediately life-threatening condition, unlike ventricular fibrillation, when the heart’s lower chambers stop beating, blood stops pumping, and the body begins to shut down. Patients with atrial fibrillation may feel palpitations or shortness of breath, but often it causes no symptoms at all. When it happens, blood isn’t pumped completely out of the atria. That increases the likelihood that the blood will form a clot, which can then travel into the brain and cause a stroke. That’s the most important reason for treating the condition [The Wall Street Journal health blog].
