Hi, and sorry to see you having to ride shotgun for your mom. Can't be much fun, eh?

Each sufferer of AF is an individual case, including genetics, co-morbidities, stage of life, and mental capacity for strain and stress....how much he/she has in reserve. Some people do not respond well to almost any drug, but there is also a wide disparity in the skill-sets AND experience of electrophysiologists. There are decent ones, not very good ones, and some real crackerjacks who seem to be wizards they're so darned good....ALL THE TIME! Well, of course nobody is that good, but there are some really great EPs in the USA, two of whom I have seen mentioned on this forum and on another forum where I spend some time, afibbers.org. The are Dr. Santangelo at Cleveland Clinic and Dr. Andrea Natale at the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute in Austin. It may be that your mother needs the skills of one such EP, or someone else at or very close to their skills and experience. Natale, for sure, travels regularly to at least five hospitals in the west, including CA, where he has privileges.

I told you this because there is always hope. However, if it turns out your mom is an exceedingly difficult case, and that further surgeries will likely not improve her circumstances, or actually raise the risk for an even worse outcome, the only option left is a pacemaker. For a pacemaker to work, they have to first destroy all the beat-signaling apparatus in the heart, meaning the Sino-Atrial node and the Atrio-Ventricular node. They do this the same way they created the scarring around your mom's pulmonary veins during her two ablations. Instead, they zap those two nodes, and then the pacemaker takes over and controls the rate of the heart. Literally millions have had this done. It's like bypass surgery, a dime a dozen. Nobody is thrilled to be in the position where this is all that's left for them, but once they have it done, it's a whole new ball game. They can sleep, laugh, go for walks, enjoy the sunshine....in fact, THEY'LL shine....again.