Saturday Quirk - Taser Reverses Atrial Fibrillation

The Emergency Department staff at a Connecticut hospital may have inadvertently found a new treatment for atrial fibrillation (AF). A 28-year-old man was examined in the Emergency Dept after spending 40 minutes in a very cold lake, hiding from the police. His ECG showed AF, which was probably induced by the extreme cold and shock; he had admitted using cocaine 2 days previously, and his blood was positive for cocaine and amphetamines.

The man was anxious to leave the hospital, and became excited and belligerent; he started to remove his IV line and ECG leads. The doctors called hospital security, who, after he threatened them, subdued him with a low-dose Taser charge. The man’s heartbeat immediately fell from around 145/minute to a regular 120/minute. On being reconnected with the ECG, he was found to have a normal heart rhythm –the fibrillation had been reversed.

There are several points to this report:

1. “One swallow does not make a summer” (Aristotle).

2. People can go from AF to normal rhythm without any intervention.

3. If in fact the Taser was responsible, it tells us that Tasers can affect the heart – not a desirable effect when used by police to control people.

What would you recommend? A controlled clinical trial of Taser therapy in patients with AF? (I suspect Tasering is not very pleasant.) And what would you use as a “placebo” control?