Ablation For Atrial Fibrillation

Hey Treefork, good luck with yours. First off, I'm retired, so I did not miss any work. However I had some serious complications from mine. Apparently the surgeon managed to puncture the heart and it was bleeding into the pericardium. (The sack around the heart.) I went for several weeks feeling like crap. Went to my cardiologist once. Was unable to see the surgeon, (claimed some type of emergency surgery came up,) so saw a LNP instead. Basically was given the old kiss off.

Went another few days and went to my family doctor. He walked into the room and his chin just about hit the floor. First words out of his mouth was "Hey Don, where the hell is your blood? You are white as a ghost." Anyway, long story short, ended up in the hospital for five days, with a drain in my pericardium, feeling like crap all the time. Then was released after the fluid was drained off.

Went several more weeks feeling better, but still having bouts with AFIB. I was on a terribly expensive drug to regulate the heart. Didn't work worth a darn. Had one failed attempt at electrocardioversion. They shocked me three times, but the heart wouldn't reset. The cardio doc was not willing to shock me any further, figuring it wouldn't be "real good" for me.

Went home, and a couple of weeks later, they brought me back in for another attempt. This cardioversion actually did work. Then they finally got around to changing the drugs they were giving me to regulate the heart beat. I have been several weeks now, without AFIB, and feeling good.

They are now telling me there is a new way of doing the ablation that was not available to them (here in SW Utah,) at the time they did mine. With mine, they went up through the artery in the leg, and burned an area in the atrium that was supposed to block the undesirable electrical currents that were sending me into AFIB. What they have now, is a cryogenic method, where instead of burning, (ie sport welding,) the area, they can go in and freeze the area completely. This allegedly has a higher success rate than the burning. And if I need to have it done again, this will be the one I go with.

Just keep in mind that the success rate on ablations is not nearly as wonderful as they try to tell you it is before you have it. My cardiodoc says the success rate for the hot ablation is about 45% while the success rate for the cold ablation is about 60%. I don't know if he even knows what he is talking about or not.
They are giving me about three more months here to see if I maintain a steady rhythm. If I do, they will slowly try to wean me off these heart regulating drugs. (They have some extremely serious side effects, if used over a long period of time.)

If I start having the AFIB again, then I'll try it again. But I'm hoping I won't need it.

I can tell you, that when I was having and recovering from that pericarditis I felt so bad that I honestly did not care whether I lived or died. In fact, I was praying that God would just go ahead and take me, but I guess he had other plans.

FWIW, (which to me is not much,) the surgeon told me that in doing thousands of these over the past 14 years, I was the only patient to have problems like this. Needless to say, ah hell, so I won't. Anyway, if I do it again, it will be with a different surgeon.

I sincerely hope that you have much better luck than I did, and there is no reason to think that you won't. Just understand that these surgeons will often gloss over the possibilities of side effects or after effects.

OTOH, I'm not one of these people who can lead a relatively normal life when I'm in AFIB. The shortness of breath, the chest pain, the loss of any desire to do ANYTHING, is just not something I can continue on with. So I will try whatever is available to try to mitigate the problem.

So in answer to your question, "was it successful," I just have to say "we will see if it is or not."