The French DR. Haissaguerre

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Posted by Sarah on March 19, 2003 at 22:48:13:

I’ll try again, I did this whole post, and lost it in the preview!!!! Oh well…

I enjoyed the conversation about Dr Haissaguerre, and his hospital in Bordeaux France. There are some things that I really like about their plan of care. I think staying in the hospital longer, and seeing if there are any other rhythms, and ablating those, before you leave for home is VERY appealing! The thought has bothered me before, of doing a $50,000.00 procedure, here in the USA, with the costs of time, travel and hotel expenses, then doing it again in 6months is so wasteful. The doc who’s doing follow-up, at home can get dumped on too. Haissaguerre says that most new AF’s raise their ugly heads about day 3, or so.

Joss was right, they have a B&B program, where your partner can go from the airport, and stay in your room with you. Cool…

They answered with detailed info about their history, prior patient preparration, what it costs, and how the procedure is done. They also gave their statistics. When I began looking for EP expertise, I had only found Cleveland Clinic, while searching extensively on the internet, who would publicly state their stats. Bless them!

Their response was that my medical history suggests a good indication for Ablation. They added that their results (successful ablations) are similar to Cleveland Clinic. However, they ablate not only the triggers, but do a linear ablation to completely block any pulmonary vein activity.(I’m not familiar with CC on this subject)

I sent them, Dr. Schweikerts quotes to me for PVI success rate ~80%-85% with 2% stenosis and 1% incidence of stroke.

Dr. H. in France, breaks his down quite a bit more, as follows: Parox-AF=70% cure w/o meds, 85% with med, but no anticoagulation, and Persistent AF=30%-50%. BUT….with linear ablation, both paroxysmal AF, and persistent AF successes rise to 85% and 78% respectively, if it is feasible to achieve continuous and coalescent cauterizing points to create a complete barrier.

The costs were also broken down, with a total given, but in “euros”, and I don’t have the patience to figure it out :-) It was interesting too that as of 2002, they’ve done over 1200 ablations at a 300 bed hospital. 78%male, and only 22%female too! (We female AFibbers are a rare breed)

I was equally impressed by the quick response from Dr. Haissaguerre’s office, since his name has been on most everything I’ve read about ablation research in the last 8yrs. They were very kind, and treated me seriously. It would be a REAL choice, if I didn’t have insurance, or wanted to go through the hassle of persuading my insurance co. that this was definitely in their best interest!

Since I’ve got insurance, and Cleveland Clinic is equally as good with the ablation statistics (recognized by the guru of RFcardio/ablation, Dr. H.) I don’t see any reason to leave home. I have no desire to travel now anyway!!! Hope that can change soon!!!..............thought you’d enjoy the subject.


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