"Some days even walking up the stairs can be difficult with my atrial fibrillation"

It was Boxing Day in 2007 when Mike thought something strange was happening with his heart.

After indulging in all the Christmas treats, he decided to go to the gym for a workout. He was using the cross-trainer machine when he noticed the heart monitor was jumping around very quickly. “My heart rate went from 120 to 180 in seconds. I rubbed my hands together and tried the heart monitors again - I thought they were broken rather than something was happening with my heart,” Mike explains.

Mike contacted his GP later that day. He was admitted to hospital and diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AF), a common abnormal heart rhythm or arrhythmia. AF causes your heart to beat abnormally, which might feel like your heart is fluttering. It happens when the electrical impulses in your top two chambers (the atria) fire chaotically when they should be steady and regular, causing them to quiver or twitch (fibrillation).

“Looking back, I had chest pains earlier in my life when I was in the military, but they would disappear quickly. The thing with AF is you can have good and bad days,” Mike explains.

Mike has received treatment in the form of ablations and cardioversions since he was diagnosed and is doing much better with his AF. “I still get the feelings of missed beats when I’m laying down but it’s not causing me nearly as many problems since my treatment.”

Can we identify patients with atrial fibrillation quicker?

The number of people living with atrial fibrillation has increased by 72 per cent in England over the last two decades according to research by Professor Chris Gale and his team at the University of Leeds. AF now outstrips the combined number of people diagnosed with the four most common types of cancer (breast, prostate, lung and bowel cancer).

The team found that the increase in AF is largely due to an ageing and more unhealthy population, putting an immense pressure on healthcare services. Despite the high numbers of people with AF, often it is diagnosed too late – only after complications such as stroke have occurred. Detecting AF is difficult as not everyone experiences symptoms. 

Professor Chris Gale and his team have developed a new digital prediction tool for AF that aims to detect it early, which they hope can soon be trialled in the NHS. This tool could help with detecting and treating AF, as well as help with the growing burden of patients suffering from this condition. 

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