Posted by Henry Alken on June 17, 2002 at 20:00:36:
The day before the ablation at the Cleveland Clinic, I met with Dr Schweikert and he spent a lot of his scarce time with me, answering my questions. I learned a lot that I didn't know before. This is the gist of what he said:
Got over to F15 at 7:45am. I met Dr Schweikert. He seems very knowledgable & smart. He is enthusiastic about his work. He explained a lot to me - things I didn't know before. EPs used to burn the inside of the veins about 1 cm in from the heart wall. This caused stenosis in 20% of cases. Now they burn around the entrance only & stenosis is now down to 3%. Stenosis can be corrected by means of a stent. The stent is a device that mechanically expands the vein. If that doesn't work, the portion of the lung that is no longer being drained by the vein has to be cut out! He said he was not sure if I had only an atrial flutter circuit or not. It was difficult to tell from the EKG. He would only know when he got inside the heart. If I did, it would be easier to deal with. If he needed to go to the left atrium, he said the equipment may not be available & I might have to return to CCF at a later time. They have two sets of PVA equipment and they are tightly scheduled. He ordered a blood test & an EKG. He said he was taught by Dr Natale & had been doing this for 2 yrs. There are 3 other doctors being taught by Dr Natale. They do 2 PVAs a day. Dr Schweikert was very interested in the EKGs I made with the equipment that connects to a PC. He made copies of them & added them to my chart. He asked the name of the company that makes the EKG equipment. He said that each of the EP doctors tends to specialize in one area. His area was using the sophisticated color monitor equipment which traces loops of flutter activity in the atria and displays a color map of the heart's electrical system. He said that EPs are now getting 90% success in curing afib - up from the 50% they used to get. I asked him if he remembered Angie Strand and told him that her email had prodded me to go to CCF, for which I was very thankful. He did. In fact he spoke to her recently about coming back for a CAT scan. They CAT scan all PVA patients at 3 months & measure any stenosis present - they do not wait for symptoms to arise. In answer to my question, he says she got 'knicked' by the catheter tip as it passed a branch in the veins. He mentioned that when they work in the left atrium they inject Heparin. Dr Schweiker also said that going through the septum causes a small hole (sometimes they prefer to make 2 holes). These heal quickly. In fact, he had a patient that had had a recent ablation & when he tried to use the same hole, it had already healed. Dr Schweikert also said that EPs think that the most important part of the maze surgery is the surgical isolation of the pulmonary blood vessels & that other parts of the surgical procedure may not be important. The surgeons, naturally, do not want to change something that works.
After my talk with Dr S. I felt I was in good hands.
Henry
- Re: Pre-Op Consultation with Dr Schweikert Jim Roff 10:28:51 6/19/2002 (0)
- Re: Pre-Op Consultation with Dr Schweikert Ed Wehan 18:47:28 6/18/2002 (0)