Holy schmokes!!! How much are these EP referral fees?

I just met my current local cardi and 50% of the time was spent in him berating me with "I don't know Dr. N and I don't know who he is" and him wanting me to see the local EP he referred me to despite me telling him from the gitgo that I have a penciled in appt. to get an ablation by Dr. N this summer if a 2nd ECV doesn't take.

Also - trying to look at root cause (excess D and calcium or any root cause) is "homeopathic nonsense" per him and everyone's experience here in reducing D is "only anecdotal".

How many failed ECVs should one have before they escalate all the way to an ablation?



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2020 02:37PM by Carey.

Quote
NotLyingAboutMyAfib
Also - trying to look at root cause (excess D and calcium or any root cause) is "homeopathic nonsense" per him and everyone's experience here in reducing D is "only anecdotal".

One person here has claimed that he and a family member have "cured" their AF with vitamin D and calcium manipulation. And that claim was based on days of success, not months or years. Another person here has long said he's able to control (not cure) his AF by similar methods. So that's about as "only anecdotal" as it gets. It's certainly not "everyone's" experience here. I'm not going to call it nonsense but any doctor practicing evidence-based medicine is probably going to call it that.

There's no established criteria for how many ECVs to undergo before having an ablation. I've had 15-20, and there's someone else here who's had far more. Whether to have an ablation or not is based on things like how symptomatic you are, what drugs you've tried, how well you tolerated them, and above all, whether you want to continue medical treatment or get it over with. And ablation is now considered a first-line treatment, so there's no requirement that you do ECVs or try drugs first at all.

Carey,

In several threads there are multiple people with a sense of D supplementation being a cause of their afib and being able to reduce their AF by reducing D.

I haven't counted them but I think it's close to 10 different accounts.

No one ever does one intervention at a time and there are no control groups in N=1s

I will go for an ablation this summer if I don't get success with this ECV.

I am hoping my only problem will be how to taper off of MulTaq in late June because I've been in NSR for 6 weeks.

It really doesn't matter how many people reported it helped. It's still purely anecdotal. Also, as I've pointed out before, reducing calcium and vitamin D can have serious consequences, especially for post-menopausal women.

And you don't need to taper Multaq. When you're ready, just stop taking it. There really aren't many drugs that require tapering and none of them are antiarrhythmics.

I agree with Carey. I just stopped Multaq with no problems.

Atenolol (Tenormin) I have experienced (Twice) should be tapered off unless otherwise advised. I was on it from 1987 to 2004 when my AF began and the ER doctor insisted I cold turkey a drug I was taking for decades. It was a miserable 6 weeks until I resumed back. I kept fainting and a tilt table test confirmed. I went off it after my ablation to start a Multaq. I just resumed 2.5 weeks ago-ramping up from 12.5mg/day to current 37.5mg/day and feel a lot better.

Jackie recommended never cold turkey stopping Flecainide. I did because I had a flec overdose. Everyone is different with tapering or cold turkey stopping a drug.