JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – May is Women’s Health Care Month and National Stroke Awareness Month.
There is a heart condition that puts people at higher a chance of having a stroke.
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Atrial fibrillation, also known as AFib, affects 6 million people in United States right now and impacts women more. Millions of people do not even know they have it.
A Starke woman’s health made a 180-degree turn thanks to a procedure that is gaining steam.
Beth Hardee is living her best life.
“I am almost 70 years old, and I feel like I have just begun to live again,” she said.
There was a different outlook for a while due to something that happened to her more than 13 years ago.
She discovered that she had AFib after an episode she experienced while at a sporting event.
“I can’t tell you how many times I have literally felt like I have seen my life flash in front of my eyes,” Hardee said.
“I am sitting there, and I am looking at my grandchildren. I want to watch them grow up. I want to be around. I want to see what they do with their lives. And I’m thinking am I going to make it through this episode?”
AFib is when the heart has an irregular and often rapid rhythm. It can cause the heart to beat up to 400 times a minute.
“It governs your life in a sense,” Hardee said after delaying plans and refusing to travel because of the condition. “You live with that in the back of your mind all the time.”
It affects women like Hardee at a higher rate because they are typically diagnosed later than men. Their disease is usually more advanced by the time they see a doctor.
Those with AFib are five times more likely to have a stroke and are at higher risk of heart failure.
Hardee spent years trying to get treatment, including seven failed ablations to fix the problem.
Some doctors even told her there was nothing they could do.
But then she met Dr. Saumil Oza, who is a cardiac electrophysiologist at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside Hospital. Things changed for Hardee.
“We have more advanced techniques that can treat these very advanced patients that previously we were just saying, ‘you will probably have to live with this,’” Oza said.
That new technology is artificial intelligence that allows doctors to identify the specific parts of the heart that are
News4Jax first told you about this new system nearly a year ago as it was just starting an initial clinical trial.
Jacksonville was one of only a handful of places to do the procedure.
Now, it has evolved.
Oza says it has helped more than 100 patients in the Jacksonville area over the last year.
The procedure is more effective and efficient.
Oza says the time to complete it is shorter. It’s been reduced from more than 2.5 hours to now taking 90 minutes.
Hardee was a candidate and had the procedure done last October. She says she has not had an AFib episode since.
“I feel so liberated and free,” she said. “I am just freed of this. I don’t worry about it. I don’t think about it. I am not scared to go out and get my heart rate up because I might go into AFib. I am going to get out and go run and play ball with the kids. I’m going to get back on my bike. Things that I was afraid to do before. Now, watch out because here I come.”
“Seeing Beth as she is now, it just literally warms my heart,” Oza said. “I see her, and I just want to give her a hug because she is such a sweet lady. Seeing her just that happy and that I can play a small role in that, there is nothing more gratifying than that.”
Hardee is using this to spread hope to others who may be facing similar battles.
“I am here for a reason,” Hardee said. “If it is to help anybody else or if I can just pat somebody on the back or be encouraging. [I can] say, ‘hey, I’ve been there and done that. You’ve got this. You can do this.’”
Oza says the hospital recently received FDA approval for the procedure.
Over the next year, he and the team of doctors there will go through another study.
They plan to work with and observe more people like Hardee who have AFib and experienced having failed ablations.