Spotlight: Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a condition which affects the upper chambers of the heart and causes them to quiver or result in an irregular heartbeat.[i] An irregular arterial pulse was known to doctors in ancient China, Greece and Egypt but it was William Harvey, an English physician who first described the circulatory system, and in 1628, also described atrial fibrillation in animals. Other physicians subsequently noted an association between an irregular pulse and mitral stenosis and in 1785, an English physician, William Witherington discovered digitalis which brought relief from th...