FAQs Understanding A-Fib: Flutter
“A-Fib and Flutter—I have both. Does one cause the other?”
You can have A-Flutter without A-Fib. And of course, A-Fib without Flutter. But more often than not, they are linked.
If you have A-Flutter, A-Fib often lurks in the background or develops later.
But right now we can’t say for sure if one causes the other. We do know that A-Flutter usually comes from the right atrium, while A-Fib usually comes from the left atrium.
(When Electrophysiologists do a catheter ablation, the first stage of success is to convert A-Fib into A-Flutter, the second stage is to convert A-Flutter into tachycardia. When the tachycardia is stopped and can’t be re-induced, the ablation is considered finished. You can consider A-Flutter as a more organized form of A-Fib.)
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Last updated: June 18, 2018