Posted by John W. Gross on April 08, 2002 at 14:02:07:
In Reply to: Help - Concerned Mazer and Dr. Razavi posted by Tim Hawkins on April 07, 2002 at 10:02:44:
Dear Tim,
I have been following your posts but have not posted anything myself because of the excellent response you have been getting from other mazers.
I want to share my experience with you now in hopes it will be an encouragement. My MAZE surgery took place in Sept. of 1999. I too had go on drugs after surgery for three months for atrial tachycardia. I did fine after three months and was able to stop all medicines. I did for the first two years have times when I took atenolol for sinus tachycardia. I have not had this problem for the last six months.
It does seem that for many of us drugs are needed for a period after surgery so your case is not all that unusual. I had a ton of pac's and pvc's after surgery. They continued for some time. Last week I saw my EP doc (annual follow-up) and was told my pvc's occurred only 31 times in a 24 hour period (I wore a Holter monitor for a day). This is down from several hundred pvc's a day. It takes the heart a long time to recover from MAZE surgery. My EP doc looking at my EKG said "you would not have gotten this result from taking medicine". He was impressed. He told me that treating A-FIB with MAZE surgery is the trend at this time.
In the summer of 1999 I went to Washington D.C. for a consultation with Dr. Cox when I was considering the MAZE he told me one of the benefits of surgery would be that A-FIB could be controlled with a lower dosage of medicine if the MAZE surgery itself did not cure A-FIB. He did at that time have some patients that needed medicine but the good news is they could be kept out of A-FIB.
You are going to have to give this thing some time before making a final judgement on the effectiveness of the MAZE surgery for you. I think you will do fine...the odds are in your favor whether they be 96% or 75%!
I know it is tough. Be assured our best wishes and prayers are with you and your family. John W. Gross