2 months post PVI

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

I had my 2 month checkup post PVI and everything is OK thus far. I

may have had 3 afib episodes since the PVI, but of course without an

ECG to confirm it, its hard to be conclusive. In each case though,

the episodes didn't last very long (less than a couple of hours if

that.)

I did have one extremely bad day with either PACs or PVCs. There

have been skipped beats a lot, although days without them are

becoming more common than days when I experience them. There may

have even been some days recently where I don't even think about my

heart. Kind of unusual for me, since that has been something I've

thought about multiple times/day since last summer.

In any case, Dr. Cheng seemed pleased with my progress. He does want

me to use an event recorder over the next couple of months to try to

catch some of these premature beats to determine what they are

exactly, although he didn't seem concerned about them.

One question I did put forth to him was on my higher-than-I-was-use-

to heart rate. Before this afib stuff really took over my life,

my " normal " pulse was in the 50's to 60's. Now, its normally in the

80's. I've counted it in the 70's a few times, so I know it can go

lower. Anyway, he was intrigued by my question on this. He said

that he recently presented data/paper to the AHA, about this topic.

(Post PVI patients with higher pulse rates.) He believes there is a

link between the bradycardia (slow heart rate) in people that

eventually develop afib and the afib itself.

He said as far as my situation was concerned, its probably a

combination between my reduced exercising since afib really kicked in

last summer, and this new phenomena that he thinks that the medical

community is starting to uncover.

I also asked him about recurrence of afib. Basically, he said it all

depends how much " damage " (i.e. the burns) they do to the electrical

pathways with their catheters. This is where experience and skill of

the physician comes into play. They can't do too much damage since

they could easily do more harm than good. However, if they don't do

enough of a burn, then the erroneous electrical path will eventually

resurface.

He also said that he typically uses two types of catheters (lasso and

basket - think is what he called the latter.) He said his choice

depends on the patient's anatomy, etc. and is something he decides

realtime. He hasn't looked into depth on his success rates with the

various types of catheters though. He's not sure he could establish

a correlation in any event, because he will routinely use both types

in a patient. It just depends on which one he thinks would work for

a particular vein opening.

Anyway, that's it from me for now. Here's wishing everyone NSR!

Bruce