Originally Posted by
Terex
It's good to hear that the two of you who've had ablations have been successful. And Velo Dog, I think ablation has gone from controversial, to accepted, and back to controversial again. Maybe not controversial, but questionable in a lot of cases of paroxysmal AF. Some doctors who have been into the ablation frame of mind are looking at upstream therapy as an initial attempt to get overcome a-fib. There are a number of possible supplements/therapies that may assist in rebuilding the proper pathways to beat initiation. ACE inhibitors, Coenzyme Q10, manganese and acupuncture, among others, are being pursued as possible upstream therapies. The acupuncture thing was hard for me to grasp, but apparently vagus nerve influence on the pacemaking function may be influenced by acupuncture therapy. Again, glad to hear you guys are having success.
One summary article may be found here :
http://europace.oxfordjournals.org/c.../13/3/308.full
That's good to hear. When I originally had symptoms, I sent a fax to my then "Doctor" who disregarded everything, and said that maybe we should just talk about it sometime. Then I had more symptoms, sent another message, and again got put off. AT the urging of some folks on this forum, I demanded an appt, but got shuttled to another doc, and that doc would not let me out of the office, instead called an ambulance to take me to a hospital, where I was not allowed to see a cardiologist. We demanded, and finally got 15 minutes, and were told to "learn to live with it - it is just a minor inconvenience." That whole experience was under the mantle of a well-known national medical organization much touted in their TV ads for for its "teamwork" and "caring." I am not allowed to mention names here.
We quickly left that organization and found some REAL medical care. However, after a year of reduced cardiac output and related inability to do the things I wanted to do, 24/7 A-fibrillation, weekly stabs for Coumadin levels, heart shocks, drugs with terrible side-effects, and a noted reduction in the quality of my life, I searched for other answers, and found out about the ablation, and researched it further.
We found that the doc we chose was recognized nationally for his work and success rates. My cardio told me specifically to not have it done by a Denver doc, as they were still in the learning stages, and did not have a high success rate. Please note that doing an ablation is very much an art, and I wanted Van Gogh or a Rembrandt doing my ablation.
All went well, and absolutely no problems since.