If you experience serious clinical symptoms, such as chest pain or congestive heart failure related to the ventricular rate, the doctor will decrease your heart rate rapidly with IV medications or electrical shock. If you have no serious symptoms, you may be given oral medications. Sometimes you may require a combination of oral medications to control your heart rate. Surgery is rare for rate control. However, fibrillation commonly returns.
Doctors tailor medications to produce the desired clinical effect.
Unwanted side effects may limit the use of some medications. Co-existing medical conditions such as coronary heart disease with atrial fibrillation significantly increase the risk of stroke. In lower-risk people or those who cannot take warfarin, doctors may use aspirin. As with other medical therapies, effectiveness varies and their use may be limited by side effects. Other preventive approaches include surgery, atrial pacing, and endocatheter ablation removing the site that triggers the fibrillation by means of a high-energy electrical current delivered by catheters inside your veins.