Posted by Steve Giddings on April 27, 2001 at 15:31:33:
In Reply to: Re: New year's reflections... posted by Anders Kingstedt on April 27, 2001 at 15:30:21:
The comments about two years, for me anyway, are right on the mark. I had the same feeling of marked shortness of breath at the beginning of exercise, lasting for up to twenty or more minutes. SOme days I just couldn't push through it. I have formal training in exercise physiology and medicine, and I asked several of my colleagues. None of them had an adequate explanation. Bottom line, it did go away, but not until last summer. I'm right in line with Anders and several others who have commented that their performance might not be quite back to peak, but it is a small price to pay for no afib and no meds.
I lost a lot of strength with the surgery, once that came back, I had to retrain the muscles back to a level of local muscular endurance so that I could do the long periods of AT work to get my cardiac function to near where it was prior to surgery (when I wasn't in AF).
Concerning comments about follow up. Dr. Cox quotes follow up data for his series in terms of numbers with recurrent afib/flutter, but he doesn'say what the average follow up is, or when when and how he gets his follow up info. I believe his numbers reflect the the overall success rate of his surgeries. He has never misled me or given me inaccurate information.