A-fib treatment, [View all]
A-fib is caused by a bad electrical signal in the heart. The atrium is supposed to beat once and the ventricle beat once, blood in, blood out. In A-fib the atrium beats numerous times before the ventricle beats 1 time so blood pools in the upper chamber where blood clots could occur.
I messed around with A-fib for 9 years at my small rural hospital, they would shock me to get my heart back in time and give me pills to keep my heart rate low which tends to keep it in rhythm. Well it wore out my heart so my daughter made an appointment for me at UPMC where I ran into a fantastic surgeon. He laid out the treatment; he would do a cryo-ablation which freezes out the bad signal. He does cryo first because it is more penetrating. If that fails (it didn't for me) he would burn out the bad signal. This all done via catheter up the groin as an out patient. If those fail I could choose to take a drug that keeps the heart in rhythm. I had taken a different drug, Amiodarone, which works but has tons of side effects, I just quit taking it. There is another drug with less side effects I could choose to take. My surgeon's very last option was inserting a pace maker and defibrillator.
I had my cryo ablation 2 1/2 years ago and, knock on wood, am doing fine and only taking Eliquis.
John Fetterman will do just fine, he made the mistake that I made, I ignored my A-fib for too long. When one's heart beats 150 per minute it tends to wear the heart out. My heart is right back to the strength it should be.
I take the time to post this because I want people who are dealing with A-fib to know the ablation procedure works 75% of the time, and there is a new ablation procedure that is 91% successful. I like my surgeons at my small rural hospital but the bigger hospitals are better equipped to do ablations, IMO.
Tuesday I have my yearly appointment with my surgeon, I think I will ask him about Fetterman, in a general way.
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