Doctors & patients are saying about 'A-Fib.com'...
"A-Fib.com is a great web site for patients, that is unequaled by anything else out there."
Dr. Douglas L. Packer, MD, FHRS, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
"Jill and I put you and your work in our prayers every night. What you do to help people through this [A-Fib] process is really incredible."
Jill and Steve Douglas, East Troy, WI
“I really appreciate all the information on your website as it allows me to be a better informed patient and to know what questions to ask my EP.
Faye Spencer, Boise, ID, April 2017
“I think your site has helped a lot of patients.”
Dr. Hugh G. Calkins, MD Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD
Doctors & patients are saying about 'Beat Your A-Fib'...
"If I had [your book] 10 years ago, it would have saved me 8 years of hell.”
Roy Salmon, Patient, A-Fib Free, Adelaide, Australia
"This book is incredibly complete and easy-to-understand for anybody. I certainly recommend it for patients who want to know more about atrial fibrillation than what they will learn from doctors...."
Pierre Jaïs, M.D. Professor of Cardiology, Haut-Lévêque Hospital, Bordeaux, France
"Dear Steve, I saw a patient this morning with your book [in hand] and highlights throughout. She loves it and finds it very useful to help her in dealing with atrial fibrillation."
Dr. Wilber Su, Cavanaugh Heart Center, Phoenix, AZ
"...masterful. You managed to combine an encyclopedic compilation of information with the simplicity of presentation that enhances the delivery of the information to the reader. This is not an easy thing to do, but you have been very, very successful at it."
Ira David Levin, heart patient, Rome, Italy
"Within the pages of Beat Your A-Fib, Dr. Steve Ryan, PhD, provides a comprehensive guide for persons seeking to find a cure for their Atrial Fibrillation."
Walter Kerwin, MD, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA
PVCs Aren’t Always Benign, and He Didn’t Want to Live with Them
PublishedJuly 23, 2018
Do NOT listen when doctors say PVCs are harmless, writes John Thorton from Sioux Falls, SD. Besides A-Fib and A-Flutter, his PVCs were destroying his life and driving him crazy.
Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCs) are premature beats that occur in the ventricles, i.e., the heart’s lower chambers. (Premature beats that occur in the atria, the heart’s upper chambers, are called premature atrial contractions, or PACs.) In his A-Fib story, John writes:
John & Marcia T.
“The local MDs (about a half dozen different ones), cardiologists, EPs, and other local specialists, all told me stuff like: “Everyone has PVCs” and “PVCs are benign,” and “It is just anxiety,” and “You just need to learn to live with it”.
“I had to set up my own appointment at Mayo Clinic to get evaluated there. It was a lot of work, by me alone, to get in to see the doctors at Mayo, but it was worth it.
I honestly believe that had I not gone to Mayo, I would have suffered some major heart event, or possibly death.”
PVCs Aren’t Always Benign
Especially for people with A-Fib, PVCs should be taken seriously. Often they precede or predict who will develop A-Fib. They can increase chances of a fatal heart attack or sudden death. The good news: sites in the heart that produce PVCs can be mapped and ablated just like A-Fib signals.
Kudos to John for being his own best patient advocate, for taking the bull by the horns and dealing with his PVCs. In spite of what he heard from everyone else, he persevered and went to probably the best center in the US for treating PVCs—the Mayo Clinic. Now John’s A-Fib free and only has occasional PVCs.