New onset AFIB after Covid Booster

I'm new to this forum. My name is Steve and I first noticed my heart going out of rhythm about a year ago. I believe it all started in late November or early December - roughly 4 - 6 weeks after receiving the first Covid booster shot, Blood pressure and heart rate were all over the map, so after unsuccessfully attempting to see my GP I took myself to the ER. After EKG they admitted me to W Marion Hospital in Ocala. All kinds of tests later I was given the AFIB diagosis.

Over the last year I have been taking Xarelto and Sotolol to manage the condition. My AFIB events are unpredictable. I've gone as long as 2 weeks without an event - and the longest AFIB attack lasted about 6 days. When I'm in AFIB I am useless. I am somewhat of a 'gym rat' and I have learned that most of the time 20 minutes of cardio exercise will usually get me back into rhythm.

I'm presently wearing a monitor as I'm being evaluated for ablation therapy. I should note that I will turn 70 soon and my normal heart rate is low, 55 -60. I'm told a pace maker may also be necessary because within my normal heart rate - 55 to 60 BPM - every once and a while there can be as long as 2 seconds between beats.

I'm curious to know how many people on this site know people - or have themselves developed AFIB in assoccation with vaccination - or after having Covid. Also, what should I consider before committing to ablation?

Any advice or information is appreciated.

Hi Steve, if you do a search here (use advanced search and set the dates for all dates) you’ll find other’s comments on the vaccine and Afib. I already had Afib but the booster definitely exacerbated it with daily episodes. This lasted for about 10 days.

As far as ablation, the most important thing is who does it, and perhaps 80% of the EP’s doing ablations don’t have the necessary experience and skills. Many have learned this the hard way, having multiple unsuccessful ablations. I just had my first and chose to travel out of state to go to one of the best. I am very glad I did as it turned out the the work that needed doing was way beyond the skills of all but a handful of EPs. You want to find someone who has done thousands of ablations and who keeps up with the latest in research. Good luck!

Where did you go..and who did the procedure? I learned long ago to research doctors. I didn't mention it in my post..but I was diagnosed with CLL...a chronic form of leukemia..12 years ago. I'm a snowbird and I split my time between central PA and Florida. But I'm from NY originally and I see doctors at NY Presbyterian for both CLL and AFIB. It's my Cardiologist in FL that's discussing ablation. Won't proceed until I'm convinced it's the right move for me.

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salgeria
Where did you go..and who did the procedure? I learned long ago to research doctors. I didn't mention it in my post..but I was diagnosed with CLL...a chronic form of leukemia..12 years ago. I'm a snowbird and I split my time between central PA and Florida. But I'm from NY originally and I see doctors at NY Presbyterian for both CLL and AFIB. It's my Cardiologist in FL that's discussing ablation. Won't proceed until I'm convinced it's the right move for me.

I went to the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute in Austin [tcainstitute.com] Dr. Andrea Natale performed my ablation. That is all they do there—EP lab procedures—and they have the very best equipment. The care level was really impressive and best of all, I am now in Normal Sinus Rhythm, though I realize that there will likely be blips down the road in the 3 month blanking period.

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salgeria
It's my Cardiologist in FL that's discussing ablation. Won't proceed until I'm convinced it's the right move for me.

The first questions you need to ask them is how many afib ablations they've done in their career, and how many they've done the past year. The answers you want to hear are thousands career total, and dozens for the year. Don't be swayed by lofty titles, academic credentials, or IV League schools. Ablating afib is a delicate balance of science and art with a hefty dose of manual skills, so experience is by far the most important factor in choosing an EP to do an ablation.

Yes to all of the above (except for Dr. Natale, about whom I know only that he is very highly regarded), and I offer the following:

I watch several youtube channels regularly. A few of them reported back in 2021 that people were developing other conditions, serious ones, soon after being inoculated. One of those I recall easily was Dr. John Campell, PhD,RN who used to teach in his field. You can find his vlogs daily by that name. He mentioned that many were wondering why so many thousands of people were turning up with myocarditis suddenly. He and his online colleagues across disciplines put it down to neglect to aspirate during injecting the vaccines. What this means is that, when something is to be injected into a vein, one must aspirate to determine that the needle is indeed in a vein. Think inner elbow or on the wrist where your IV is metered. But injections otherwise are to be intramuscular. How do you tell if you're actually in muscle and not in a vein? You withdraw the plunger a few mm to see if blood is drawn into the syringe. If not, you can depress the plunger and administer the other drug...or vaccine. If you see blood, DO NOT plunge and let the vaccine, an MRNA derivation, go directly to the heart. Campell and others are quite certain that this error, often in haste to get hundreds through the facility each day, was contributing to myocarditis.

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salgeria
I'm curious to know how many people on this site know people - or have themselves developed AFIB in assoccation with vaccination - or after having Covid. Also, what should I consider before committing to ablation?

As I posted here, 2021 was a bad afib year, for me, with 15 episodes in 9.5 months (generally I have a couple a year as I've had afib for over 18 years). One was highly associated with a non-mRNA C19 vaccine (J&J) and the others were more loosely associated with the mRNAs. After my rhythm got pretty wonky (for me - many have much worse situations) in late Oct 2021, I started taking 50 mg flec/day and was when I got my mRNA booster. For that I had no issues. Dropped from 50 to 25 mg/day a month after the booster & later dropped to 12.5 mg/day. In Oct of this year, started taking 50/day a few days before the bivalent booster, then dropped to 25 after 10 days, then to 12.5. May have been too fast a ramp lowering the dose as had an episode last night, about a month after the booster. Decided to go back to 25 and see what happens. As I said in my linked post, I have found studies showing even 50/day should have no efficacy, much less 12.5. 50 twice a day seems to be where efficacy is better than placebo (which is about 9%)

In addition to what Daisy and Carey said, I'd ask the % of longstanding persistent cases the EP does and what the success % is for those. These are the most difficult cases and even if you aren't in that category, a person who can handle that level of difficulty is likely to handle a lower difficulty case very well.