A Fib & Travel

Just wondering what experience you all have had with travelling. And how the Travel Insurance views A Fib. From my experience it is rather unpredictable when an episode may occur. Sometimes I just wait it out but sometimes go to the er.

I think it is highly variable among afibbers. For some, afib is very symptomatic and debilitating, others it is an annoyance. How is it for you? Do things like altitude changes bring it on? A trigger for me is the product of duration x intensity of exercise, so long duration coupled with high intensity. I've had afib in a three person snow cave I constructed and camped on the side of a 14,000' mountain. In both cases I took PIP flec to convert. In the case of the 14er, I chose to not summit the peak the next day, though I still had to hike out with my pack, so took it comparatively easy by not summiting. I also had to hike out the next day from the snow cave with snowshoes and a 70# pack. So I don't worry about it. I do take flec with me when I travel. My health insurance covers me internationally, so that is not an issue.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2018 10:41PM by GeorgeN.

I never went to an ER unless my rate was over 200 (unfortunately that was quite common for me at one time). I've been to Italy and Germany, and probably a dozen domestic trips while I had afib. I tried to live with afib and never let it own me. If an episode happened, it happened. It might make for a crappy day but I was never disabled by my afib. Obviously, if it's disabling for you then that's a different matter.

Never bought travel insurance so no clue what they think of it, but I'm sure they require some sort of documentation so just canceling a trip and waiting it out isn't going to work. You would at least need a letter from a doctor or an ER bill or something.

As George said, it really depends on how disabling your afib is.

It all depends on how afib impacts your lifestyle. The only things I would not do if in afib was anything that was physically demanding - workouts, jogging, hiking, etc. I had over 200 episodes over several years, all converting on their own. I did go for one conversion, but then didn't see a need to go for any more. I was always in excellent physical shape, so afib was a minor inconvenience. I had a successful ablation 12 years ago because I wanted to do hiking trips in Europe. Travel, fine - Hiking in the alps with afib, not so fine.

I went on a week long ski trip every year that I had afib, but didn't have an episode on any of the trips. If I had, I would have kept skiing, just at a more relaxed pace.

I did loads of travelling while my AF was paroxysmal, scuba diving trips to very remote places like Papua New Guinea, Palau, Yap, New Caledonia, Vanuatu. Didn't have any problems. Paid extra premium on travel insurance to have cover for AF.

I never dived during an AF episode but once I was back in nsr I was right back under water.

When the AF became persistent I stopped travelling and went for ablation in Bordeaux in January 2003. Four months later I was diving from a live-aboard boat in the Maldives.

Gill

(PS. Sadly I hung up my fins a year ago. Once you are underwater, diving is no effort but at at 79 years old lugging bags of dive gear half way around the world was getting too hard.)

I traveled all over with no extra insurance. Low and behold went into afib on a train once in Japan. I just pretty much tufted it out. It was very frightening and nerve racking but I lived