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
Recurrence: Odds of Staying A-Fib Free After Ablation
I’ve updated and expanded the answer to a Frequently Asked Question about recurrence of your A-Fib after a successful ablation:
I think your chances of staying A-Fib free are pretty good.
A PVI is Like a Kind of Immunization Against A-Fib
If your Pulmonary Veins (PV) are well isolated and stay that way, you can’t get A-Fib there again. When the PVs are isolated and disconnected and haven’t reconnected, it seems to be permanent. But it’s too early in the history of PVA(I)s to say this definitively.
NOTE: PVA(I) is a relatively new procedure. I had my catheter ablation in 1998 and I’m still A-Fib free today. However, at that time of my ablation, only one of my Pulmonary Veins was isolated, so in theory, the other veins could start producing A-Fib signals—but that hasn’t happened.
Regrowth/Reconnection of Ablated Heart Tissue
There is a tendency for ablated heart tissue to heal itself, regrow the ablated area, reconnect, and start producing A-Fib signals again. But if this happens, it usually occurs within the first three to six months of the initial PVA(I).
Recent research indicates that for a small number of people, a successful Pulmonary Vein Ablation (Isolation) procedure may not be a permanent “cure.” Dr. Francis Marchlinski of the University of Pennsylvania…read the rest of Steve answer.
