Welcome to Helix Talk, an educational podcast for healthcare students and providers covering real-life clinical pearls, professional pharmacy topics, and drug therapy discussions.

This podcast is provided by pharmacists and faculty members at Rosal Franklin University College of Pharmacy.

This podcast contains general information for educational purposes only. This is not professional

advice and should not be used in lieu of obtaining advice from a qualified health care provider.

And now on to the show.

Welcome to Helix Talk episode 84. I'm your co-host Dr. Kane. I'm Dr. Schumann. And I'm Dr.

Patel. And the title of today's episode is,

Rate, Rate, Don't Tell Me, Rate versus Rhythm Control and Atrial Fibrillation.

So we'll be providing an overview a little bit about AFI,

but mostly talking about what are the advantages and disadvantages

and kind of the nuts and bolts of rate control

or rhythm control and patients with atrial fibrillation.

And if you were waiting to hear something from Peter Segal, you might as well just change your

radio channel right now.

So we'll kick it off with a patient case.

And this is a fictitious patient.

We're going to call her Elsa May.

She's a 79-year-old female who comes to the clinic for just a routine checkup with no specific

complaint. She has diabetes hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and heart failure with reduced

ejection fraction, also known as systolic heart failure. In terms of her heart failure,

she's a New York Heart Association Class 2 patient, so she has some limitation of her physical

activity. And during her vital sign check,

...