Sudden AF onset after near fainting, feeling like heart stopped

Hi all,

In July I was diagnosed officially with AFIB at the age of 27. I've had several episodes prior, never diagnosed, and in July I had two powerful episodes, the latter of which I went to the hospital for.

Right before each of the July episodes I had a sudden sense of missing heartbeats for 3 to 5 seconds before an intense surge of adrenaline and full on 190+ bpm AFIB. It was almost as if I was going to faint, pass out, and my breathing felt like it seized. Each episode I jumped up from my sitting position, quickly grabbed my chest for a beat, and fell into complete panic. For a brief few seconds it felt like it'd be "the end" for me.

Before the pause, I thought my heartbeat was normal. After the supposed pause in heart beats, I'd "kick on" with an intense flutter of a heartbeat followed by very distinguishable arrhythmia beats in my chest. At which time I was very worn out and dissociated.

Both of these episodes occurred about two days after drinking heavily (7 to 10 drinks a night, 3+ days in a row).

When I went to the hospital I sustained an AFIB for over 20 hours before they cardioverted me.

Unfortunately I suffer heavily from anxiety as well. The combined "stop" of my heart followed by an intense flutter and uncontrollable heartbeat no doubt pushed me into a panic attack episode as well. It is arguably the worse feeling I've experienced and it's happened twice in one month.

To anyone so kind as to read my post, have you experienced anything like this?

The area I'm most concerned with is the several second "stopping" sensation of my heartbeat. In the moment I feel like I'll die, and it sends a jolt of intense adrenaline and panic through my system.

My anxiety is sadly pushing me to believe there is something beyond normal AFIB that is causing these episodes, and to be frank I'm having intense paranoia about sudden cardiac death.
I've now been placed me on a 30 day monitor to try and capture what the onset looks like for my AFIB and I still fear the worst. The doctor thinks it may be SVT related in some way. My head has gone into wild thoughts of potentially having Wolff Parkinson White or other severe electrical issues. I've even convinced myself for a time that I went into VF during the flutter and jolted back out of it due to adrenaline. Is there any chance they didn't catch something like that?

I'm now on Xarelto and 120 XT Cardizem a day for the duration of the monitor. I won't have my results analyzed until October 3rd and it's been a major source of stress for me.

Thanks so much everyone.

WPW is congenital and would present on an EKG that just about any competent practitioner would recognize immediately. Little chance of you having that.

VF does not resolve on its own. Frankly, if that happened outside of immediate countermeasures you'd be gone. You're not, so it didn't.

Binge drinking like you describe is extraordinarily toxic to the body and the heart. I'd look there first before anything else.

The pauses are probably just "reset" intervals between PACs (premature atrial contractions), which we all know here are the precursors to a full-blown AF episode. Certainly heed the results of your monitor to be certain, but my money's on PACs.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2017 10:40PM by wolfpack.

What wolfpack said. All of it. I wish I had said it myself so succinctly.

Breadsander,

I'm glad you've made it through these 2 nasty episodes. I assume you're seeing an electrophysiologist? The absolute best one in the area/region where you live? Do research, and find the best one you can. Folks here will help you, especially if you can let us know where you live.

Please stay away from the alcohol. I too binged in my younger days, and I also have anxiety. There's much worse things in life than not being able to drink, especially to excess. Being on blood thinners you absolutely do not want to faint, as a head injury can have dire consequences.

First off, thank you everyone who has added their replies to my post. I appreciate them very much.

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AB Page
Breadsander,

I'm glad you've made it through these 2 nasty episodes. I assume you're seeing an electrophysiologist? The absolute best one in the area/region where you live? Do research, and find the best one you can. Folks here will help you, especially if you can let us know where you live.

Please stay away from the alcohol. I too binged in my younger days, and I also have anxiety. There's much worse things in life than not being able to drink, especially to excess. Being on blood thinners you absolutely do not want to faint, as a head injury can have dire consequences.

How do I go about finding the "best electrophysiologist in the area"? Being young I've never before had to seek any medical professionals out for help.

I do have an electrophysiologist assigned to me, but it was one that was simply assigned at the time of my hospital visit. And admittedly the hospital I was admitted to is not highly ranked for my area (Pittsburgh).

An electrophysiologist in most, but not all, cases is a specialist whom you'd see on referral. It's best to start with a cardiologist who will "team up" with an electrophysiologist. Simply put, it'll be easier for you to see and correspond with your cardiologist than it would be to do so with an electrophysiologist especially if that EP is doing a lot of catheterization procedures and thus has less time for office visits. If an ablation is in your future, then that's going to be the type of EP that you want.

I'm not familiar with the Pittsburgh area but I'm certain there are members here who are.

I would caution, though, do not rush headlong into the ablation route without addressing risk factors such as the excessive alcohol consumption. One should not seek an invasive and potentially hazardous treatment option simply to keep on going with the status quo as it were. Successful outcomes in AF almost invariably require pairing expert medical procedures (be they surgical or pharmaceutical) with careful risk-factor management.

That said, please accept our wishes for good luck on your AF journey! We'll be here to answer questions and offer support.

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breadsander

How do I go about finding the "best electrophysiologist in the area"? Being young I've never before had to seek any medical professionals out for help.

Being so close to Cleveland, I would start at the Cleveland Clinic. The Clinic is very highly rated. If you can, the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute is one of the absolute best - search Andrea Natale on this forum.

The name escapes me at the moment but one of the country's top EPs is in Pittsburgh. At UPMC, I believe.

In PA definitely go to University of Penn, but never just rely on a medical center's name or general rep when seeking out the best individual EP to have their hands on your catheters for those golden several hours in the EP Lab. It is the experience and skill of the actual EP whose hands will be on your catheter during those critical hours they have your hearts care as their 100% priority that makes all the difference in the world in being able to get even advanced AFIB out of your life and into the rear view mirror in the least amount of total work required.

I've worked with very many patients who understandably chose first and foremost highly respected general medical centers for an AFIB ablation process , and that method often works out fine for treatment of most knowledge-based medical speciality conditions and issues.... Not so for choosing such a skill-dependent procedure operator as is AFIB ablation!

And often afibbers will at least seek out the most respected name in overall medical care within a major metropolitan areas of the US and yet still wind up being sucked, unwittingly, into a 4 to 6 ablation merry-go-round by very well-meaning and often very well-educated and super nice and caring doctors but who nevertheless turned out to be under-experienced and under-trained in successfully addressing the most challenging difficult cases.

And this reality can absolutely be true even with directors and mentors of respected clinical EP fellowship programs doing the ablations (or at least some of the work) since only a relative handful of EP fellowship program directors/mentors worldwide are themselves frontline every day ablationists for persistent and LSPAF cases ... the toughest kind of cases ... in their every day practices.

University of Penn is second only to St Davids Med Center in total ablation volume in the US last time I checked, and are closely colleagial with St Davids and Dr Natale's world largest and highest volume persistent and long standing persistent ablation research center across Austin/San Francisco. Like I posted in another recent thread started by a new Afibbers forum poster this morning who is looking for the best ablation help in PA ... hands down I recommend Dr Pasquale Santangeli and Dr Fermin Garcia from Univ of Penn for AFIB ablation. And they are both skilled in persistent and LSPAF as well as VT ablation. The rest of the EP crew at Univ of Penn are very experienced as well, though I have the most in-depth knowledge about Dr Santangeli and Dr Garcia who I can both strongly advocate for in Pennsylvania.

Dr Santangeli has 8 to 9 years now of mentorship by Dr Natale who sponsored Dr Santangeli into the US from Italy and Dr Santangeli is often called on to handle many Non-Paroxysmal cases at Penn due to his close mentorship by Drs Natale in these challenging type cases along with his mentorship too by Dr Frank Marchlinski, director of the world class Univ. of Penn center. And Dr Garcia is first class all
the way as well.

Hope that helps!

Shannon



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2017 05:45PM by Shannon.

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Shannon
I

And often afibbers will at least seek out the most respected name in overall medical care within a major metropolitan areas of the US and yet still wind up being sucked, unwittingly, into a 4 to 6 ablation merry-go-round by very well-meaning and often very well-educated and super nice and caring doctors but who nevertheless turned out to be under-experienced and under-trained in successfully addressing the most challenging difficult cases.

Shannon

Quit talking about me ;-) 9/22 cannot get here fast enough, my scheduled 4th ablation (1st with Natale). Thank you Shannon!