Adjunctive Arrythmia: Asking for a friend

For years (more than 30) she was told she didn’t have afib. She had occasional bouts where her heart would be beating 100-150 with some symptoms. She was treated with Metoprolol (no blood thinner). Over the years the episodes got closer together so they suspected afib but weren’t sure. My understanding is the did a catherization to map it out and then told her to come back after a month being on a blood thinner so they could do the ablation.

She had an ablation yesterday and they told her she had afib and adjunctive arrythmia.She was told that there wasn’t much they could to treat the adjunctive arrythmia except metoprolol or calcium channel blocker or pacemaker.

Not sure I got it 100% accurate. Does it sound right?

Adjunctive just means in addition to, so it doesn't say what this other arrhythmia is. She needs to call the EP who told her that and ask for an explanation.

Sorry! I messed up. She was told she has Junctional Arrythmia and Afib.

Ah, okay. That makes a lot more sense. A junctional arrhythmia is one originating in the AV node. The AV node is the place where the signals from the atria are sent to the ventricles. Its job is kind of to act as a rate limiter. Your atria can beat at rates the ventricles could never sustain. So the EP's explanation makes sense. They can't ablate what's wrong with the AV node; they can only destroy the AV node and give you a pacemaker to take its place. That's the nuclear option. Once you take that path you're going to be pacemaker-dependent for life. That's not the end of the world, but that's what it is. There's at least one person here who has had an AV node ablation.