Daily Mail readers question about AF - Atrial Fibrillati...
Daily Mail readers question about AF
Have read the letter and reply and am flabbergasted !! Am really quite angry , this doctor ( !! ) is in a position to educate not dismiss what potential is AF .
I too felt that the article didn’t properly or fully address paroxsymal AF or explain how elusive it can be.
My PAF hid from all the tests mentioned, except angiogram which I didn’t have, and has been caught only once by official monitoring in the years that I’ve had it.
Obviously, it’s not good to scare readers but I would have liked a mention of PAF.
I agree. And thought he might be quietly pushing statins! PAF can be so elusive and hard to capture and he certainly gave the impression that if you have an OK ECG and your pulse feels fine then wobbles are ectopics and you don't have AF. I was going to say it was scurrilous but having looked at the definition, it's less appropriate than I'd thought.
Thanks, seasider18 for the link.
What concerned me most was the statement ‘you can be absolutely certain that you do not have atrial fibrillation’.
I agree. "Always" and "Never" type statements don't belong in medicine.
"quietly pushing statins..." ABSOLUTELY!
His reply to a Statin inquiry
dailymail.co.uk/health/arti...
Oh, that seems very fair actually. Thank you! I didn't say he was pushing statins - just seemed to be giving them the thumbs up!
My GP used to recommend them and took them himself due to family history.
Now he has the latest instruction sheet to GP's on his wall that says to tell patients the benefits and drawbacks of statins and let them decide from that. He went through that after my wife's last increased reading and she turned them down. I asked if he still took them and he said he had stopped them. He was already looking at his watch so I saved my 'Why' for another time.
Statins certainly seem to divide opinion. My pharmacist had a go at promoting them.
They serve a purpose for some and if you don't have side effects may do some good.
Thank you. I'm reluctant and cling somewhat to feeling they'd not do a lot for me.
I tried them twice and each time had muscle pains.
It does puzzle me that so many people say 'Statins/Big Pharma' for what is mostly a cheap drug but practically fall over themselves to switch from cheap Warfarin for expensive NOACs.
That, I think, may well have something to do with the quirks of Warfarin and the comparative simplicity of the newer anticoagulants.
Would you (presume you are an NHS patient) still take NOACs if you had to pay for them ? It always seems strange to me that that people fear strokes more than heart attacks.
I am an NHS patient and if I had to go out to work and scrub floors to raise the money for a NOAC, I would do so. I think my alter ego (Rellim296) said the same a while back.
I can't think of anything worse than being seriously debilitated and dependant.
I agree. For me being dependent means loss of freedom especially as we get older. Losing my independence and handing control over my life to others is a fate worse than death. Literally! I've taken legal action to refuse assisted living and nursing homes. Especially the way things are run in the US.
Warfarin is cheap but it is a very harsh drug. It has been around a long time and information about side effects is still being discovered. NOAC's seem simple and easier on our bodies but it's early days comparatively. It will be interesting to see how they fare over the long run. Many of us won't be around by then. But drug research is, in my opinion, an ongoing, neverending fact. Even when a drug appears safe there will always be other newer drugs in all fields being developed that can potentially interact with the tried and true. "Everything in the Universe is subject to change. And everything is on schedule." -unknown irina
I must be different then as I found it a thorough and caring explanation dealing with all aspects of the condition bearing in mind that it is obvious from the reply that a lot more information had been given by the questioner which we had not seen. Ectopics can be troublesome for some people but they are not and never can become AF.
Yes Bob, that was why I posed it. Anyone can post their thoughts on the article on the site..
He did a very thorough article on AF a week or so ago that was posted on here.
I’m with you Bob - I thought it was a clear and reassuring reply and that the doctor obviously had details of a medical report on comprehensive set of tests and that there was no evidence of AF.
You have a good point but I saw a false sense of security being offered to a patient he did not know.Maybe just me being conservative.😯
I thought the letter writer did well to get so many tests for 'extra heartbeats '. He seems to have had the lot and had his symptoms taken more seriously than some of us with much more worrying symptoms.
Perhaps he has private insurance
Not necessarily, I had all those tests + MRI scan whe I started my af journey 5 years ago. 9 years previous I had had the same tests and was told they were ectopic beats and signed off. So either ectopic can become af, or I had af all the time!
Or you developed it? AF and Ectopics are really quite different animals, however, if your heart is susceptible to arrhythmias you can have both.
I thought whilst ectopics and AF are distinct ectopics can be a precursor or trigger for AF. In particular ectopics originating in the pulmonary veins can trigger AF. I thought this was the reason for ablating the veins to contain these signals? I know in my case a run of ectopics usually prefaces a bout of AF.
Ectopic in medical terms just means out of place. With ectopic beats, what happens usually is that the ventricle contracts before blood has been passed down by the atrium so there is no "beat" as there is nothing in to squeeze out. The next complete cycle then feels like a thump. Everybody has ectopics often up to 200 a day for normal people but we AFers just notice them more because we are sensitive to what our hearts are doing.
The rogue signals from the pulmonary veins are what cause the muscles of the atrium to writhe like a bag of worms rather than contract in a regular manner. It is for this reason that they are isolated (hopefully) during ablation. Hope that helps.
Aren’t I the lucky one😊
Who IS this guy who is making a diagnosis in a newspaper article on a patient he has not examined. His recommendations and reassurances are very cavalier. AF can often have a vagal nerve problem as a trigger. And I would certainly not want my diagnosis of AF made by just taking my pulse. Also, one has to wonder if he is in the financial clutches of Big Pharma's Statin department. I guess we should be thankful that the more time he spends writing his newspaper opinions means he has less time to see actual patients and cause possible harm. As usual just my opinion. irina
He did have access to the full medical record of the questioner with far more detail than was included in the article. That much comes over from a careful read. That is if you believe it is a real person anyway. I often wonder how many of these "cases" are made up just like the old agony aunt stories use to be to fill the pages.
Good point about credentials. Sometimes it's hard for me to identify people who might not be real posters ar have strange agendas.
He is also the medical advisor to the TV series Doc Martin. He obviously brings a lot of medical conditions into the story lines and has several times featured AF in them that has been commented on here.
Well, that's interesting and puts a new spin on my first opinion. I might have been wrong. Doc Martin is one of my favorite British series. I have the entire set on DVD as well as many other British shows. (I'm a rewatch freak.) Re Doc Martin the medical advice always seemed to me current and spot on. I believe one of the show's greatest assets was that the excellent medical advice and information in the script allowed Doc Martin to be so 'off the wall'and get by with it. Even I can put up with a difficult doctor if the knowledge is there. Doc M was always spot on. Thanks for sharing this tidbit.
Well he must be the Martin in Doc Martin
Dr Scurr is a medical consultant to The Blue Door team. He was educated at Stonyhurst College, and Westminster Medical School. As a junior hospital doctor he was one of the first to undergo Vocational Training, completing a three-year scheme in 1977, preceding the inception of the Vocational Training Act in 1980, at which time it became mandatory for general practitioners to undergo a four-year course of postgraduate training.
He commenced private practice in the centre of London, was the opening Medical Director of St John's Hospice at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, and was appointed as Physician to Westminster Cathedral, taking responsibility for the Cathedral Choir School and the care of the Cardinal and clergy living on the site.
Following appointment as Chairman of the Independent Doctors Forum in 2003 he was appointed as medical columnist for the Daily Mail Newspaper with over 6 million readers and 17 million web site hits each month. He consults at the Chelsea Consulting Rooms, Lower Sloane Street. He has co-edited a book about the 'inner worlds' of GP's 'Doctors Dissected' to be published in January 2015
Interesting reference to the interaction with the vagus nerve
I thought that the response was thorough and balanced and that it gave information that was helpful. The person who asked the question said that their father had died of a heart attack when only aged 46 years – understandably this, together with their own symptoms, had greatly heightened their anxiety. From my reading of the article, the person concerned had undergone an extensive range of cardiac investigations (which the doctor responding had more detailed information about from the original letter that was sent to him). It may be that the doctor felt that explanation and reassurance were needed now.
My view exactly.
However, no reply to a medical question in a newspaper can ever replace a one to one examination with your specialist and I would hope that people would have the nouse (a Yorkshire word for common sense) to know that. His reply seemed perfectly balanced to me.
Personally, I never read the Daily Mail and we are in ‘silly season’ when they search for something to write about....so I always take anything written in that paper with a very large pinch of salt followed by a lot of research and then make my own mind up.
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