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Isolated Atrial Fibrillation Episodes: Is Ablation a Good Fit?
Heart Rhythm Conditions | Last Active: 1 day ago | Replies (104)Comment receiving replies
I don't know what this person read, but I do keep up with the latest and greatest on all things ablation....to the extent a layman with an aging mind can. Every video I have watched that is less than a year old, and I have seen at least six in the past week (ya gotta trust me on this; I'm keenly interested!) says that ablation is INCREASINGLY THE gold standard for treatment, and the reason is because morbidity is greatly reduced across other forms of intervention. In fact, the latest research has lowered the upper limit for 'burden', that being the amount of time the heart spends in tachyarrhythmias or in dysrhythmia. It used to be 8%, but an article I saw before Christmas said it was better to start treating more aggressively when the burden rises past 3%.
Once your friend challenges his current cardiologist to learn of his/her rationale, he would be strongly advised to seek at least one more opinion. Please do call...today....and get an appointment, in office, with a good, well-regarded cardiologist, even if you have to drive him for an hour; it will be worth it.
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I cannot find any peer reviewed articles in the NIH data base that even remotely suggests that ablations are a a problem. All the latest data comes up when searching Afib +Ablation. In fact I found numerous articles that also say Ablations are more effective and more economical than medicine control of Afib. As for my experience my doc did a 2nd ablation (5 1/2 years after the 1st) on me after I began experiencing regular Afib events on average every 4 weeks for almost a year. My burden was at or below 1% for all those events. I always self converted between 18 hours to at most 3 days. His reasoning was I was having multiple Afib events and even though my burden was low I was obviously heading towards more failures and possible higher burdens. The earlier the better to catch it.