Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Prevention
By Mayo Clinic staffThere are some things you can do to try to prevent recurrent spells of atrial fibrillation. You may need to reduce or eliminate caffeinated and alcoholic beverages from your diet, because they can sometimes trigger an episode of atrial fibrillation. It's also important to be careful when taking over-the-counter (OTC) medications. Some, such as cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, contain stimulants that can trigger atrial fibrillation. Also, some OTC medications can have dangerous interactions with anti-arrhythmic medications.
- Atrial fibrillation. American Heart Association. http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4451. Accessed Jan. 20, 2009.
- Atrial fibrillation and flutter. Heart Rhythm Society. http://www.hrspatients.org/patients/heart_disorders/atrial_fibrillation/default.asp. Accessed Jan. 20, 2009.
- Atrial fibrillation. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/af/af_all.html. Accessed Jan. 20, 2009.
- Thomas MC, et al. Blood pressure control and the risk of incident atrial fibrillation. American Journal of Hypertension. 2008;21:1111.
- ACC/AHA/ESC Writing Committee members. 2006 guidelines for the management of patients with atrial fibrillation. Europace. 2006;8:651.
- Singer DE, et al. Antithrombotic therapy in atrial fibrillation: American College of Chest Physicians Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines (8th Edition). Chest. 2008;133:546S.
- Podrid PJ. Patient information: Cardioversion. http://www.uptodate.com/index. Accessed Jan. 20, 2009.
- Cappato R, et al. Worldwide survey on the methods, efficacy, and safety of catheter ablation for human atrial fibrillation. Circulation. 2005;111:1100.
- Voeller RK, et al. The effects of the Cox maze procedure on atrial function. Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. 2008;136:1257.
- FDA approves first ablation catheters for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2009/NEW01953.html. Accessed Feb. 6, 2009.
