WASHINGTON At least 120,000 Americans a year suffer strokes because of a common irregular heartbeat one that's on the rise, hard to treat and can shoot deadly blood clots straight to the brain.
Now doctors are experimenting with a new way to prevent those strokes: a tiny device that seals off a little section of the heart where the clots form.
If it works and a major study is under way the Watchman device might provide long-needed protection for thousands of people with atrial fibrillation, whose main hope now is a blood-thinning drug that too many can't tolerate.
"I don't think I'm biased, but it could potentially revolutionize a-fib, which is a ton of people," said Dr. Steven Almany, vice chief of cardiology at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. He has implanted the Watchman into more than a dozen patients so far.
About 2.8 million Americans have atrial fibrillation, the most common type of irregular heartbeat. It is most common among the elderly, and cases are increasing as the population ages.
Atrial fibrillation occurs when the heart's top chambers, called the atria, get out of sync with the bottom chambers' pumping. The atria speed up, and blood pools inside a pocket of the heart, allowing clots to form.
About 20 percent of the nation's strokes are blamed on this condition, and they tend to be particularly severe.
About a third of the patients die, and another third are significantly disabled, Almany said.
The blood thinner warfarin, also called Coumadin, lowers the stroke risk dramatically. But it is difficult to use it can't be taken together with dozens of other medicines, and it requires dietary restrictions and regular blood testing.
In addition, side effects include serious, even life-threatening, bleeding.
By some estimates, almost half the people who should take the drug can't or won't, and "there are lots of people out there on Coumadin who want off," said Dr. William Gray, a cardiologist studying the Watchman at New York's Columbia University Medical Center.
"This provides the opportunity, hopefully, to get them off the drug.
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