Ablation at Vancouver General, Dr. Andrade

I had a catheter ablation done by Dr. Andrade and staff at Vancouver General Hospital on April 19, 2017.
This was my third ablation, the other two were done by a different Dr. at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. Those first two ablations had no positive effect on my AFib.

I have had AFib for 17 years and used pretty much every arrythmia drug out there. Some worked for awhile.
Before the third ablation things were getting bad for me.
I was spending most of my waking hours in a recliner as I was in AFib over 50% of the time. If my health did not improve soon, I had decided to sell our farm.
I just could not maintain things.

Since the ablation in April 2017 I haven't had so much as an uneven beat, at least not one I'm aware of.
I'm not on any heart drugs or blood thinners, or in fact any medication.
My energy levels feel like they were twenty years ago.
Ok maybe not quite, but not far off!

Since the ablation I've tackled some very physical jobs and my heart has functioned perfectly. For example, I used a 12 pound sledgehammer to break up a 700 sq ft concrete patio, then hand loaded the rubble into a tractor bucket for haulaway. Not knowing if he would approve or disapprove, I showed photos of the piled rubble to Dr. Andrade. He grinned ear to ear and told me " this is the outcome we desire- a patient who returns to normal life".

Dr. Andrade and the staff at VGH have given me my old healthy life back.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2019 11:48PM by worntorn.

Being free of afib is awesome, is it not? :-)

Glad you told your story. What we mostly hear here are negative results so it's always good to be reminded that sometimes things work out great.

Love this story!

So glad things have worked out for you.

Quote
Carey
Being free of afib is awesome, is it not? :-)

Glad you told your story. What we mostly hear here are negative results so it's always good to be reminded that sometimes things work out great.

+1

Great story! Congratulations, and great job Dr. Natale!

Awesome!

Thanks, all

The ablation was performed by Dr. Andrade in Vancouver, Canada.

Good job Dr. Andrade! NSR to you, worntorn!!

+1

Your story is so vivid. Good for you!

Wow, great story!

I live in Victoria, and would be interested to know which EP's you used here.

How did you find out about Dr. Andrade, was he recommended by someone?

Any further details you are comfortable providing would be appreciated, especially about Dr Andrade.

Thanks

Hi Doug

The EP that performed both of my Victoria ablations is no longer practising in BC. I can't say that the fact that the ablations were unsuccessful was his fault. It may have just been luck of the draw.
I can say that his follow-up to both procedures was non-existent.
Also, after having the unsuccessful ablations then reading on this site and realizing how important it is to find a skilled EP, I researched that EP and did not find any patients who were doing better after one of his ablations.
For me, VGH was an entirely different experience. They have a very strict policy in regard to patient followup and they don't miss anything. My experience with them started about 5 years ago, long after the Victoria ablations.
I was enrolled in their AFib program then. Initially they tried a variety of AFib drugs which I had not yet trialed.
Flecanide showed the most promise but in the end it wouldn't work for me. It kept stopping my heart for periods up to 5 seconds which caused blackouts.
They wanted to perform a third ablation, but I didn't want that.
I met one of their two EPs, Dr. Bennett. He struck me as someone who would be good at their job ( fairly young, keen) so I did some research.
He has performed a lot of successful ablations.
He performed one on a neighbour of mine who looked awful ( was on Amiodarone as last resort)and is now doing great.
So I decided to go ahead with an ablation by Dr. Bennett.
But this is socialized medicine, I wasn't paying 90k so it doesn't work quite that way.
With the VGH AFib program, if you join the queue for an ablation, you get either Dr. Bennett or Dr. Andrade, depending on who is scheduled to be in the OR on your booking date.
Once I was given a booking date, it became clear that Dr. Andrade would be performing the ablation.
I had a consult with him prior. Not fully understanding how the system there works, I expressed my wishes to have Dr. Bennett do the procedure, thinking I had that option.
I did my best to be tactful, but there is no nice way to say
" I don't want you, I want your colleague"
He was most gracious about it and patiently explained how their system works.
I know his feelings were hurt.
I went home and did some checking to see if Dr. Andrade had good success with his ablations.
I found that he had tremendously positive reviews.
He is also very highly thought of by my local Cardiologist who told me that " Dr. Andrade is the Dr. I would hope to get if I ever need an ablation. You are very lucky"

As I mentioned, at my post ablation checkups I have let Dr. Andrade know just how he has turned my life around.
He's a shy guy, but I could tell he felt pretty good about it.

Glen

My catheter ablation for atrial flutter was done three years ago here in Victoria at the Royal Jubilee by Dr. Paul Novak and was successful. I now have afib and I'm willingly going in for another ablation on March 4th. Although the success rate (75%) for afib ablations is less than a-flutter, which is something like 95%, I have complete confidence in Dr. Novak and the Western Cardiology team.

Irene

~ IreneJ

Irene, I've heard good things about Dr. Novak and also Dr.Leather at Royal Jubilee.
My complaint regarding my procedures there rests mainly with the practitioner- for example, in the late afternoon after the first ablation, he came in for a post-op visit. The visit only lasted minute or two as he clearly wanted to leave.
My OR nurse wife asked a serious question about my post op care and he didn't answer, just made some joke then left.
I had more trouble with AFib after that first ablation than I ever had before.
After several months and no communication from the EP or Royal Jubilee, I finally called the EP'soffice and talked with a staff member there.
They listened but seemed uninterested. They did not suggest a consult but said they would pass my comments on to the Dr.

A year went by and I heard nothing back.
In the meantime, I read the results of the AFib survey Hans had done.
RJH didn't have great numbers at that time.
At this time,I happened to attend an 80th Birthday party
for an uncle. A cousin of mine asked about my AFib and I gave her the whole saga.
I also told her about RJH success numbers at that time.
Her husband was the Chief of Medicine at RJH at that time.
Two days later I received a call from the booking Dept. at RJH to say that they had been instructed to book me for a second ablation.
I had the procedure done, but no luck and, once again, no follow-up to see how I was doing.
As I mentioned, this Dr. is no longer practising in BC.
I suspect that by now RJH have improved their followup.
If not, and you have a good Dr. such as Dr. Novak or Leather, it probably doesn't matter. They will make sure followup happens.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2019 06:54PM by worntorn.

Hi worntorn...I certainly can relate to the feeling of falling through the cracks...the same thing happened to me at the very beginning of my whole process. I discovered that you have to be proactive and make sure that they have you on their radar. So every time I've been told that there will be an upcoming appointment, I've called or emailed within a few weeks, just to make sure I'm on their wait list. I'm not a particularly assertive person, so it's out of character for me, but this adventure has taught me that I have to be!

I'm glad that you are back to your healthy self!

~ IreneJ

I've been referred to Dr. Yeung at St.Pauls Hospital, in Vancouver BC, for an ablation....have you heard anything about him?

Sorry, I haven't heard any reports/reviews on Dr. Yeung.
On edit- Looking at RateMDs he gets many good reviews, however his receptionist is not well liked. Oh well, who cares if the receptionist is prickly as long as the Doc is good!

Glen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2019 11:06PM by worntorn.

That is so true Glen...thanks for your reply.

Good News Worntorn!

Jason Andrade is my go-to ablation referral in western Canada, he is very smart and a very good guy too! He and Atul Verma at South lake in Ontario are my most confident Canadian ablation referrals... good choice ... or should I say it was good luck of the draw?! :-)
Either way you did good!

Cheers!
Shannon

Hi, looks like I missed some posts in the last week.

Thanks Worntorn for your reply. Your experience (like mine) confirms that there are lots of people that do ablations without particularly good results.

Sandie, I had a number of ablations in Vancouver with Dr. Yeung with no improvement. In fact, if anything I got worse. He is a very nice, compassionate man, I really liked him, but at least in my case, no results. I ended up going to Bordeaux about 10 years ago, and that helped greatly, almost always in NSR since then, although I'm still on flecainide, and just in the last year or so experiencing lots of extra beats. Previous to Bordeaux I was in afib 24-7 for the better part of 6 years.

I have since moved to Victoria and am seeing Dr Sterns at Western Cardiology. I'm considering another ablation at some point in the future if things continue to deteriorate.

Has anyone had an ablation with Dr Sterns? Wondering about his success rates. I find most EPs very vague when discussing success rates, and vague about defining "success", so good to get personal testimonials. Does Hans still do his survey, by the way? I think the last one I saw under "Resources" was from 2011.

Shannon, thanks for your opinion on your "go-to" Canadian referrals. Any other comments would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hi Everyone:

I'm new here. I currently have a referral to the A-Fib clinic at St.Paul's. In reading this forum I feel that I'd like to try to get in with this Dr. Andrade, but how do you do that? Should I call my cardiologists office back and just ask them to refer me? They asked me if I wanted to go to Vancouver General or St.Paul's so I assume it's neither here nor there to them where I go or who I see.

I'm also wondering if there's any way find out anything about a particular electrophysiologists - especially what their success ratio is? Googling isn't providing me with much.

I'm reluctant to go through with this surgery at all so reducing the risk of failure is pretty important to me.

Any advice or suggestions would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

I wouldn't think they would care if you want a certain EP, but a call to your cardiologist would probably answer that.

There used to be a survey of patients done by this website that gave success ratings. I'm not sure if they still do it, the last one I could find under "Resources" was from 2011. I used to follow those surveys quite closely, and at that time (10 years ago) I don't think anyone in Vancouver was really on the radar as having any kind of decent success rates. Royal Jubilee in Victoria, which I think would be mainly EP's from Western Cardiology, had reasonable ratings.

I think it's definitely worth trying to pin down some success rates before you commit to someone. My EP in Vancouver told me that he didn't have the time or the resources to do enough follow up to determine success rates. A likely and maybe convenient story...…I got no improvement from him after multiple ablations, and ended up going to Bordeaux, which, although not a cure, helped me greatly.

Dr. Andrade sounds very interesting.