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Replies to "Ann - thanks for your post. I have been on nearly all the meds for AFib,..."
Heart Rhythm Conditions | Last Active: Aug 24 5:52pm | Replies (56)
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Replies to "Ann - thanks for your post. I have been on nearly all the meds for AFib,..."
There is such a thing as 'RVR' which is 'rapid ventricular response'. It isn't good having AF, but when the left ventricle contracts in the same frequency, this can be a slow recipe for disaster. The heart is a muscle, after all, and muscles to need to have periods of low activity/low demand. If you're sleeping, but still in AF, and also in RVR, the left side of your heart is getting no rest, and will eventually lead to heart failure due to enlargement of those vessels' walls.
An AV node destruction stops the rapid ventricular response (RVR), but it does not normally also stop any further AF. AF occurs because of a 'leaked' electrical impulse emitting from one or more places inside the left atrium that causes it so contract chaotically. An ablation is meant to place a 'dam', a circular dam, of many small lesions around the 'focus' or reentrant where this extra beat signal enters the left atrium. Those lesions become scar tissue, over which the electrical impulse cannot pass. No passage, no extra beats. AF stops. That's what ablation is meant to do. There is no ablation, no lesions, when doing an pacemaker implant.