Eric,
The recognized beginning window of not just when a clot can start to form, but the earliest time frame accepted now for beginning of actual stroke/TIA risk is 5 hours after onset of AFIB.
The 24-48 previous window was a rough average time frame as obviously not everyone is going to have a stroke after 5 hours of unprotected AFIB... Thank goodness.
But the 5 hour time frame is important as people can and have stroked in that time frame marked from beginning of AFIB episode.
Also, I would not use waiting for 24-48 hour long episodes as the metric from which to then pony up for an ablation. While some folks start out in persistent AFIB, most experience a gradual progression over time during which gradually accelerating rates of structural remodeling start to set in and for most such more typical AFIB progression stories, by the time you get to clocking regular 24-48 hour episodes you have very likely insured yourself a much more extensive ablation process to secure long term freedom from the beast as well.
The better rule of thumb is, at the beginning of AFIB,or at least as soon as you find this website and/or discover kind of experieced well-seasoned advice, make a 6 month to 1 year dedicated effort to essentially end your episodes, or at least come very close, via all the life style risk factor/ weight loss if needed, address 'metabolic syndrome diabesity' issue and OSA sleep apnea, and adopt good diet and Strategy repletion. If you are not almost totally successful ( as in George's case as a guideline example, who though he still will have a very occasional but pretty rare eoidode from overdoing exercise mostly, he is able to quickly end the episodes often in under an hour and he is not having a dozen episodes a year or there abouts either.
If you are having even a big reduction in episodes that is super, but if that reduction is still in the roughly one episode a month or more range and those episodes last a few hours up to more than a day ... And if this is your new normal even after having adopted all of the above self-health protocols, ... then do not procrastinate in also adding I. An expert ablation process any longer and hook up with the best ablationist you can.
I don't agree that so called 'well-managed' AFIB includes having AFIB a dozen or more times a year. It may be a big improvement over having three a day, to be sure, and a big step in the right direction. But don't get complacent just because things are a good deal better. When you are still triggering AF at a rate of one a month level, the odds are very high you are continually laying down more structural remodeling/scarring etc such that at a certain point the odds are you will suddenly increase frequency again over a matter of months until you become 24/7 persistent and thus will almost certainly have made a tougher road for yourself.
Don't do like I did and drag it out 16 years before making sure you do everything possible to put this genie back in the bottle for the long haul ... Instead, do what we strongly suggest and do not accept AFIB as even a monthly visitor in your life. Especially if you are in your 60s and younger and enjoy a relatively active life. That is not at all 'well-managed' AFIB in my book, it is mostly just drawing out the inevitable at that point and increasing the odds for even more ablation and more areas of both atrias needing to be addressed while increasing the odds of steadily increasingly silent cerebral ischemia (SCI) which are tiny white spots accumulating in your brain over time that are individually asymptomatic but accumulate overtime with on-going modest or greater AFIB burden, leading to a significant increased risk of early onset dementia.
But I also know that most people will postpone adding in an expert ablation long past when it might be best for them to do so and will hold out until the AFIB just gets so intolerable that they are basically willing to sell there home and mother both to get back to NSR before they finally make that decision. I fully understand and did the exact same thing, even though I was never overweight or out of decent shape and ate well since my teens and mostly was health conscious most of my life since then as well. Even was able to buy about 5 years of near total freedom from AFIB via a close Strategy-like protocols etc. but still I procrastinated and rationalized up a storm to convince myself I had this all under control until I finally flipped into 24/7 aggressive persistent AF that no amount of supplements, dietary changes of redoubling RFM efforts would alter the reality that I had waited a good deal too longer than was in my own best interest.
My AFIB story has turned out very nicely in any event, but in the process due to my lng prior 16 year history before connecting with Dr Natale (and to be fair most if that 16 years was either before AF ablations even existed or they were still in the dark ages), but nevertheless I had to go through just about every EP procedure known to man and some of them many times with 16 ECVs and 14 TEEs, two ablations, a LARIAT and LARIAT leak plugging device ( not to mention a pacemaker now half way through generation two) etc. to win back the blessings of constant unbroken NSR I've enjoyed for years now.
If only a handful of afibbers really digest the message to first adopt aggressive self-health as a life time commitment but then also remaining open and willing to partner with the very best most experienced EP they possibly can, when and only If, all the Self Health measures fail to deliver truly outstanding degree of freedom from all arrhythmia. The content focus on emphasizing this balanced truly integrative path your ads reclaiming a quite heart as soon as is practical
will have been well worth the effort.
Shannon
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/2016 12:20PM by Shannon.