Electro Conversion good or bad?

The feeling is almost certainly attributable to the propofol or maybe the little bit of fentanyl they sometimes also use in addition to the propofol. You should feel nothing unusual when your heart is happily beating in NSR.

I know a woman on affibers.org who claims to have had over 50 cardioversions. She's not a nut case, but her heart is. She's about the strongest person I know...period...for what she has endured. So, don't sweat having cardioversions, even if they only buy you a month of peace. It's better than the alternative because a heart in AF is an ailing heart that will begin to remodel itself and bring on more intractable arrhythmia and even mitral valve prolapse or heart failure. IOW, the less time you are fibrillating, the better off you'll be in the long run.

That said, any time before you progress (and you almost certainly WILL progress...) to more advanced forms of AF, they being persistent and permanent, you should be in line for catheter ablation. It may sound daunting, especially if you haven't educated yourself about it for any reason, but it's not much more complicated than an endoscopy with some polyp removal and such. The manipulation of the catheter is routine, what it does has been practiced for decades now...it's just day surgery! But it will stop your inclination to go into AF now and then, if it works, and you will have decades of bliss ahead of you. Put it off until your heart begins to give you signs of progression, or until you get scared enough to do it, and you make the job of detecting and isolating the re-entrant foci of the unwanted/extra signals that much more difficult...meaning harder...meaning the risk of it not working completely rises. Make up your mind early and find a really good, busy, highly regarded, electrophysiologist, meet him/her, and get into line.

Really appreciated your comments....Thank you.

I have had 3 previously -- admittedly lost track of the exact timing. The first two lasted about six months .... the most recent is beyond that.

My major issue has been skin reaction to the pads on my back so I need lidocaine patches on my back for the first 24 hours. Also a few days of "ease back into things" recovery time but nothing with major impact ---

No skin issues but certainly dizziness....and light headedness.

Reading this now I would say that there was an element of lightheadedness immediately afterward for a period of time that day and the day following but less of that in the next couple of days. I assumed it may have been from the anesthesia. I drew the impression and with compassion from your comment that your symptoms are far more than a few days ...

Hello wildacres100,

I had 5 or 6 (?) cardioversions and did not experience any post-procedure issues, although my chest felt somewhat like I had a sunburn, and my back was itchy, all of which subsided in several days. Our bodies react differently to these medications - perhaps increasing your water intake and some walking will assist in flushing these out of your system. However, if this remains an issue for you, please reach out to your EP or primary physician.

As gloaming suggests, it is better to treat the causes of AF early as they will probably propagate into other manifestations, such as persistent AF, if not. From my experiences, cardioversions are something of a “hopeful” treatment but (in my humble opinion) are also a “band-aid” approach that eventually fails and leads to having an ablation, which, as gloaming says, is as routine today as getting your teeth cleaned. Gloaming also mentions an individual with countless cardioversions (yikes!), so all I can think of is either they need to find another EP or are not a candidate for an ablation.

The person I'm referring to is an exceedingly difficult and complicated case. She has seen untold numbers of really top notch healers. The latest for her, and really the last (resort I mean), was to have a pacemaker installed. Unfortunately, it is only a 95% solution for her as she still has rhythm problems, as we who are her friends over on affibers.org know only too well. Again, she's easily the worst, most extreme, most complicated case I know of. How she has endured this (along with other trials earlier in her life) makes me firmly resolved that she's the toughest person I know..of. Tough enough to fly back and forth between the USA and Israel semi-regularly to see family (I think...she keeps her privacy). She has literally spent weeks in ERs over the past 24 months!