What is Low Atrial Focus?

Question

has been diagnosed in child with rare genetic disorder.

Answer 1

Are you sure that the term is "low atrial focus"?

The reason I ask is because it sounds as though the doctor diagnosed your child with an atrial tachycardia (a fast atrial heartbeat--this always influences the ventricles, too, so when the atria speed up, so do the ventricles, though not always nearly as fast, but it starts in the atria) caused by a focus low in one of the atria, usually the right.

That's because the heart has two major foci (focuses) for initiating and regulating the heartbeat. the top one, the sinoatrial node (SA node), is the major pacemaker for the heart. If the heart has an extra nerve (or two) that acts like a node--there are expected places for this to happen: the pulmonary veins, for example, which are lower in the heart than the SA node--then the atria will beat irregularly, often too fast.

So did the doctor tell you that your child has such a focus that will cause what is called "focal atrial tachycardia," with the focus low in the atrium?

There is another kind of tachycardia ("tachys" is the ancient Greek word for "fast"), called "reentrant tachycardia," but that means that the node in question has a kind of "circular" extra pathway for the beat signal to come back around to the node very quickly. In that case, though, there is no extra focus.

In your child's case, there seems to be one, low in the atrium.

I would guess from your question that your child's pulse, though fast, is regular? If there is more than one focus, the heart often will beat irregularly.

How's your child's thyroid function? They've checked that, of course?

Does it come on with exercise, or is it at any time? He's not had to have heart surgery, has he? There are a few types of surgery, especially those concerning the valves or the pulmonary veins that make a big difference in the heart's function. These are important questions to ask because the answers will tell you how careful you have to be with this case. Sometimes you don't have to be too careful at all, but at other times you have to be quite watchful.

I hope your child can climb trees and wrestle with the dog and laugh often. I hope you can laugh, too.

Answer 2

You can read up on Low Atrial Focus(or Fibrillation)at this website;
http://www.rjmatthewsmd.com/Definitions/atrial_fibrillation.htm
Good Luck and God Bless