AF often recurs.

Reader: In 1993, I was in AF and a cardioversion was attempted. I cleared the operating room at 11:00 a.m. with the AF gone. Hospital staff put a heart monitor over my sternum that had stainless steel wire loops holding it together. About 7:00 p.m. the AF returned. I have a theory about the event, and why the cardioversion failed.

The monitor is actually a radio; electric devices have wires in them that carry electricity, the antenna is in the overhead of the hallway outside the hospital room. Any wire that carries electricity has magnetic forces circumferentially arranged.

That magnetic force interfered with the microelectrolytic event that makes a muscle move, and that cardioversion treatment became a failure. Any chance I'm right?

Dr. Zipes: It is very unlikely that the magnetic force you describe caused the atrial fibrillation for several reasons. First, and most important, the skin offers significant resistance to the passage of such electromagnetic forces, and protects us from their effects as we stand close to electric sources of all kinds. Second, if such electromagnetic interference did occur, it would as likely cause the lower chambers of your heart, the ventricles, to fibrillate and you would have had cardiac arrest from ventricular fibrillation. Third, recurrence of atrial fibrillation after cardioversion is so common, it even has its own initials: ERAF, or early recurrence atrial fibrillation. Therefore, what you describe is not at all unusual without having to invoke other causes.