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Is 81 year old too old for ablation?
Heart Rhythm Conditions | Last Active: 3 hours ago | Replies (21)Comment receiving replies
Don't think 81 is the issue. It's our status... if the meds don't work for whatever reason, life is miserable, and we're otherwise healthy and can tolerate the typical surgical burden, and we have a really competent doc on board whose done thousands of these procedures, then we can give it a shot.
But remember: these are not always successful, quite often they're not successful... even after several, and sometimes things go bad while you're on the table, or complications arise which can be serious... and in a few cases even deadly. That's why we're asked to sign the consent form.
As long as I remain in the consistent excellent physical status I'm in (per my EP and GP), functional, without issues, without compromising my general health, continue to tolerate the only med I'm on (Apixaban), able to do basically anything I want to do (exercise, work around the house, etc), I'm choosing to not roll the dice. We're all experiments of one.
All the best!
/LarryG
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@larryg333
Thank you, larryg333, for sharing your insights. I opted out of ablation and have had three cardioversions, enjoying decent energy during the times between them. Informing my decision to opt out of ablation is the experience of a friend who chose a tricky heart valve surgery and ended up on a ventilator in rehab for a nearly two years before she died. This created a years-long burden on friends to settle her complicated estate. As I do, she lived alone, so nobody knew the intricacies of her finances. This Mayo Clinic support group has been helpful in presenting the downsides to ablation rather than the rosy picture painted by my EP and the friends who "know someone who had an ablation and is just fine"! Everyone is different, and I have 80 years of amazing and unexpected experiences to look back on and enjoy again. As larryg333 noted, we're all experiments of one.