Posted by Bill Kilgore on September 10, 2002 at 18:52:04:
In Reply to: Re: Ablation posted by John W. Gross on September 10, 2002 at 17:34:34:
John,
Thanks for your note. I have read many of your postings and am glad for your progress. I have paroxysmal a-fib. It is somewhat alleviated, if not controlled, by Disopyramide (Norpace), and I am on warfarin. My principal motivation for choosing to have a procedure is the scientific evidence that ablation is much more likely to be successful if tried before the heart remodels due to chronic a-fib and the fact that my doctor, John Seger, has teamed with Dr. Cheng to form an atrial fibrillation center of expertise of sorts. Also, no one has ever said to me that sometimes a-fib just gets better and goes away, and there is plenty of scientific evidence that a-fib progresses. I have some risk of being on anticoagulation for the rest of my life, so a chance to correct the problem has some appeal in order to be off anticoagulation. Basically, Dr. Cheng tries to electrically isolate all four pulmonary veins from the heart using radio frequency and to stay outside of the pulmonary veins ("outside the cave") in order to reduce the risk of pulmonary stenosis to zero. The procedure sometimes has to be repeated due to several reasons. There is a time limitation on how long the patient can be exposed to the radiation that is used to allow the cardiologist to see the ablation tip inside the heart; if not all four veins are isolated the first time, Dr. Cheng gets them all on the second round. I believe this is the latest inovation of the ablation technique, i.e. isolate the veins and stay "outside the cave", because the initiators are most often on tongues of heart muscle that protrude inside the pulmonary veins, and one does not wish to damage the veins. Drs. Seger and Cheng do not do the Maze but can refer a patient to doctors in Houston, or anywhere else, who do perform the Maze. I always delight in reading about someone's success with the Maze operation. Like many of the contributors to this site, I am a long-time exercise lover and have idiopathic a-fib. Interestingly, a recent study in Spain showed that 2/3 of a population of males with idiopathic a-fib (around 60 of them, I recall) have been long-term participants in sports as compared with less than 20% of the general population. We would like to think that we can just train ourselves enough to overcome any health problem, but a-fib poses a different sort of challenge. My best to all on this web site.
Bill
- Re: Ablation John W. Gross 12:26:20 9/11/2002 (0)