How soon to get next ablation?

I had my ablation done the last week of August and everything seemed to be going well until about 30 days later, when I had my first instance of Afib. Two weeks later, it happened again.

I then had my follow-up with my EP, who said that the 30-day holter monitor showed no signs of Afib until the instance on the last day, and that wasn't a good sign since late-reoccurence often indicated that the heart healed too well and that there was conduction again with the pulmonary veins.

This is week eight, and I've had two more instances of Afib, so I'm thinking the procedure wasn't a success and I'm going to start taking nightly flecainide again.

I'm thinking of scheduling a second ablation, but wonder if it's too soon. Due to various factors at work, it would be better to get it done in the next couple months than to wait longer. Is that too soon to consider the ablation a failure and have the second done?

BTW, my EP is Fermin Garcias, who is supposed to be one of the best at UPenn, a high-volume lab. I was planning to stick with him, though I was disappointed that before my first ablation, his team did a poor job of communicating what I needed to do pre-ablation and only had me stop flecainide two days before (it seems they forgot I was even on flecainide), and I wonder how much that may have contributed to the failure.

Too soon. You need to wait at least the full 90 days. It could be that a lesion has healed over like your EP suggested, but sometimes people get late recurrences during the blanking period that eventually settle down and go away. You wouldn't want to repeat an ablation unnecessarily. And if I were you I would also stop the flecainide at 90 days. You'll want to know for sure what your status is at that point and you don't want flecainide masking anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2018 05:23PM by Carey.

I agree with Carey. As he stated you need to wait at least 90 days. It was 6 months between my last 2 ablations (January- July). And its been a little over a month since I had a 2 week run of flutter. I just passed the 3 month mark for my last ablation on the 20th.

After the 2 week run of flutter at about the 2 month mark I would never have thought I would be sitting here in NSR drug free but here I am.

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rocketritch



After the 2 week run of flutter at about the 2 month mark I would never have thought I would be sitting here in NSR drug free but here I am.

I noticed that my pulse rate goes up after a few days of no diltiazem, so think I will stay with an abbreviated regime a while longer.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll get it another month or two.