Heading to a cardiologist

Re:Heading to a cardiologist by kingofpandora on Saturday December 08, 2018 @06:11PM (#18638077)

I've had afib and it's not as scary as "heart problem" and "cardiologist" makes it sound like. Where I live at least, you don't even go to a cardiologist but an electrophysiologist and if you get the operation, it's a same-day in and out or maybe one night procedure with 85% success rate.

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Re:Heading to a cardiologist by rootusrootus on Saturday December 08, 2018 @07:04PM (#18638274)

That seems very anecdotal. For some people the first symptom of their Afib will be sudden death. That it doesn't present for everyone that way does not make it trivial.

Also, an electrophysiologist IS a cardiologist, with an additional couple years of specialization. Ablations are still considered invasive surgery and they do carry some risks.

Now if you told me PVCs are not scary, I'd probably agree. I get 5K-30K of them every day, depending on some factors. Definitely not up there with Afib.

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Re:Heading to a cardiologist by ghufran_syed on Saturday December 08, 2018 @07:43PM (#18638439)

"first symptom of their Afib will be sudden death" - citation?

It's clearly possible, as is the risk of death from pulmonary embolism after flying on a plane - but that doesn't mean that we should screen all flyers for pulmonary embolism.

This site has a useful risk calculator for risk of complications of a-fib: http://www.zunis.org/FHS%20Afib%20Risk%20Calculator.htm

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Re:Heading to a cardiologist by stared on Saturday December 08, 2018 @08:08PM (#18638588)

> get the operation, it's a same-day

Could you expand on that? Radio-frequency ablation is not something that is done the same day.

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Re:Heading to a cardiologist by DanBC on Saturday December 08, 2018 @08:15PM (#18638618)

King of pandora is saying that the operation can be done as a day surgery under a local, and the patient can go home the same day.

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Re:Heading to a cardiologist by mikestew on Sunday December 09, 2018 @11:43AM (#18641730)

I had an ablation, don’t know enough to know if it was “radio-frequency”. Home that night once they concluded that I wasn’t going to bleed out from the leg vein punctures.

That said, I would not have the same casual attitude of parent. Poking holes in your heart, no matter how small, is not without risk. And it is my understanding that most people stay overnight after an ablation.

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