Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Afib

Normal sinus rhythm, conversion worked.

We’ll be headed home in an hour. Gotta lie flat 4 hrs.

Three down, one to go.

This is a great facility. Arklatex area well served by the Willie-K as we call it and LSU Sch of Med nearby.

DF

Great to hear Dirtfarmer, congrats and I hope you have many years of a Happy Heart Beat coming your way

Thanks.

Gotta get her back where she can cook and clean. Good women hard to find. Have 47 yrs invested.

She has some help with cleaning. She’s a great cook.

DF

CT scan May 15th and pre op physical. If all goes well procedure early June. Doc does the Farapulse.

Got some cool stuff to show you guys. My wife said she'd never seen so much equipment in a surgical suite, electronic stuff everywhere.

Cardiologist is an Electrophysiologist. He came up thru the femoral vein with a special catheter into the right pulmonary vein as it joins the right atrium, then poked thru the atrial septum into the left atrium and worked on the area where the left pulmonary vein joins the left atrium. Those junctions are usually the culprits.

These are electronically produced pictures of the inside of her right and left atria.

First picture shows the areas of contrasting color which are the areas of concern, areas where those crazy electrical signals originate.

Second picture shows where he zapped those areas.

Third is a pretty sight, normal sinus rhythm.

DF

Glad it worked for you. I had the TEE I think it's called. Non invasive they say. Except I think it's invasive to cram something down your throat. Part of the process was mapping my heart. I guess if I have any further adventure that would be useful information. Or they got to charge more while had me hooked up to the Medicare meter.

Doc said I am pre Afib. I have PAC's and PVC's. They put in a 24/7 heart monitor in my chest that down loads every night at midnight. This after my stroke a year and a half ago. I am on Plavix blood thinner now.

I am scheduled for another heart MRI in three weeks because of two birth defects in my heart.

Dirtfarmer. Wish I had an EKG like that last picture

I had an occasional PVC. My cardiologist put me on the Beta Blocker, Carvedilol, which had eliminated them.

Best to you.

DF

Those are amazing images. Was this a regular thermo/electric type burn to ablate?

I think it was the burn, don't know if the freeze technology is still used.

Seemed to have worked.

Very tedious and time consuming. Takes a special personality to pursue Electrophysiology. With the uptick in post Covid A-Fib cases, it's not easy to get an appt with one of those "EP" Cardiologists, as they are called. You get in line. We waited around 6 weeks. He did two that day. A busy cardiologist can do a dozen or more cardiac cath procedures in a day, these guys two or three is pretty good day.

DF

That's why the new procedure is so much better. My cardiologist said the longest he has been in there is 80 minutes.

My electrophysiologist got hired away by a teaching hospital in Nebraska (?). He was a really sharp, young guy and had his pilot’s license and an airplane so we hit it off real well.

I had an EP study for PVCs and I was awake just enough at one point to hear him say, “I don’t see enough to justify any cauterization”. They implanted a monitor but so far they’ve been able to control the PVCs with meds. We hated to see him go.

Yeah, EP’s are in great demand. No telling what financial packages they’re being offered.

But they worth it when you need one.

Takes a long time for their training. They gotta be a cardiologist then train for EP.

DF

My wife couldn’t take Multaq, which is an upgrade of that one. It also caused nausea.

Those anti arrhythmia drugs are relatively new. Guess they cool if and when they work.

3mo supply of Multaq retails for $2,600, cost us $600 after insurance. So we have a 3 mo supply of meds she can’t use. Oh well.

I have a good bud, a fellow Fire contributor, who takes Multaq. May pass them to him (prob not legal). But who’s gonna know, especially after this goes on the web.

Ha! Not guilty till caught. Too expensive to go to waste. I know you guys wouldn’t rat us out….

DF

My first ablation was about 3-1/2 month wait. After I kept having episodes the wait was about 6 weeks. There was a EP Fellow, a cardiologist becoming an EP on my procedure. I needed general anesthesia to complete the process.

Well if he was using you for practice, seems to have worked out ok. You still kicking.

DF

My wife’s EP related that during his EP training he himself needed a procedure. His mentor did it and this guy wanted to be awake during the procedure. He watched his own procedure on the monitor as it was being done. Pretty tough dude I’d say.

DF