Atrial fibrillation features prominently in Rich Peverley collapse

Professional hockey player Rich Peverley gave a news conference today in which he and his medical team announced surprising details about his heart condition. We learned that atrial fibrillation and its treatment featured prominently in his collapse during a game earlier this week. “A flare-up last week led Peverley to skip a road game, and he had upped his medicine.” Here is an email I received from another journalist: “They’re saying he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation when he was traded in the offseason and went for a physical. The procedure was that they “shocked” his heart. The plan was to do an ablation but they wanted to wait until the offseason because of the amount of time he would miss. They said the plan was made in conjunction with Peverley himself, his agent, the team and the team medical staff. The procedure was performed at the Cleveland Clinic. They said it only took 14 seconds before they began the medical response, which they had planned for. They think on Monday he was somewhere between atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter when they shocked him.” That last sentence is tough to understand. In twenty years of practice, I have seen only two possible ways a healthy patient (without WPW) could collapse from AF or atrial flutter. One is 1:1 flutter from a Type Ic drug (flecainide or propafenone); the other is polymorphic VT (torsades de pointes) from a Type III drug (sotalol, dronedarone, dofetilide or amiodarone)...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs