Atrial fibrillation and loss of “atrial kick” leads to a decrease in stroke volume due to decreased in left ventricular end-diastolic volume (preload). This effect is especially severe in diastolic dysfunction, impaired contraction, or in mitral stenosis. The contribution to ventricular filling is about 10% at rest but increases to up to 40% with tachycardia as filling time is reduced.
Copyright Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
