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Heart Rhythm Conditions | Last Active: 5 hours ago | Replies (7)
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@gloaming loading dose is 200 mg twice a day. I was only prescribed the drug when I called and complained about fatigue 3 weeks post ablation. My doctor went on vacation and I still have not spoken to him. Everything is being decided through a PA and the cardiologist who did my recent cardioversion. I don't see my actual doctor for four weeks. I had an ablation in 2022 that lasted four years. It was with heat. This one was the new one l, the pulse field ablation. I'm just going to follow orders and pray my heart listens to the medicine.
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@koleke Thanks for that. I still don't like the idea of you being on amiodarone if you aren't experiencing ectopy or AF/AFL (atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter). But, that's just uneducated me....what I missed was that you had a cardioversion? When? And for what? It was a cardiologist who agreed to perform that procedure, so I'm guessing he/she found your heart to be in an arrhythmia...
When I had a rough time shortly after my second ablation, about two weeks later, I was given a bolus of metoprolol, and no cardioversion was attempted. The internist explained that I had failed on three recent cardioversions, so they didn't feel it was likely to work. When I told that to my EP's outreach nurse, she was very emphatic that the ER team did exactly the wrong thing. Every time a heart undergoes an ablation, it's like a reset. Many EPs, including mine, will routinely cardiovert the patient before releasing them from the cath lab. After they have blunted the rogue signals and the job appears to be done, the heart is newly in NSR, patient blissfully sleeping, they cardiovert and wheel the patient out to recovery. So, if your heart begins to act up in the blanking period later, a cardioversion is THE thing to do. Lucky for me, my heart accepted the bolus and I converted back to NSR that evening..................and have been in NSR ever since. Thirty-eight months now.
As for the 200 mg twice a day, and I hasten to remind that I am uneducated in medicine, my experience was 400 twice a day. Maybe it has to do with body weight, or other conditions that I'm not aware of....but it seems like a stingy dose for loading. On the other hand, these people should know what they're doing, and maybe they know from experience that someone in your circumstances will/should do rather well on that lower initial dose. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I hope it works out well, that you can unlax a bit, feel better, and that you get over this rough patch. If the worse comes out to the worst, you can always have a second ablation. Happened to me, seven months after the first. About 25% of all index ablations fail, but happily the probability for a success is considerably higher for a second attempt.