First of all, if a healthy active person has a choice between being on lifetime blood thinners and a chance to cardiovert to sinus rythem and stay off, I would go for it.

The cardiologist is right.

As the for the Affirm trial it has nothing to do with your situation. It studied elderly, over age 69, men with afib and looked to see if rate control vs rhythm control was superior over the other in terms of survival. It found there was no survival benefit of rhythm control over just controlling the rate when comparing two different arms: one group on rate control with beta blockers etc and those on antiarrythmic medicines. There was no seperate arm for those undergoing successful cardioversion and I believe these people were excluded from the study. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from that study.