Posted by Carl Plaskett on April 27, 2001 at 19:17:58:
In Reply to: To maze or not to maze posted by Lowell Rottrup on April 27, 2001 at 19:03:52:
Lowell:
Like Jack, Bob, Ed, and numerous others, I also fit the "profile": late 50's, former competitive swimmer, biker, triathlete. First diagnosed 8 years ago, but
I must have had it for at least 10 years, but I wasn't curious enough about why
some exercise episodes left me really exhausted and some just exhausted, until I finally felt really bad before exercise.
Tried the various meds, Tambocor being next to the last. With it, my cardiologist just kept increasing the dosage and my epsisodes kept increasing in length and intensity.
Went to EP who felt that flutter was my primary arrhythmia, had him do an ablation, results very good for 6-8 months (I also was taking amiodarone after the ablation), but success started to dwindle. Finally, in November, I had another 6 month pulmonary function test, and it showed a dramatic decrease (a common side effect of this drug) so I asked my EP if he thought I was now a
candidate for the Maze.
The rest is history. I had my procedure by McCarthy at Cleveland Clinic exactly
one week ago, and arrived back in Florida today, sore, expecting to have good
and bad days for awhile, but glad I did it!
My procedure was full open chest, which may have been because they had just done another large person with the mini-maze, and ran into a few delays getting him in SR at all. Could be the time on the heart-lung machine or something else, but they told me afterwards that they had used the open chest
routine because of my size.
Find out why your EP poo-poos the maze. At this website, you will learn that many physcians know so little about the procedure ("experimental", "risky", "not
a cure" are a few which come to mind).
If you can, contact McCarthy at CC, get your records to him, and go visit him
beforehand. I did NOT do this, but it might have made me a little less aprehensive about doing it all in one trip, but today I am satisfied that I did the
right thing. I will keep the board posted of my progress, as I know Ed and others will do as well.
Good luck getting answers.