Cryoablation

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone here has ever had a cryoablation done. I am going in surgery in march to have this done to try to get rid of my accelerated juntional rhythm. My dr wants to try to knock out the juntional without wiping out the av node or giving me heart block. He has made no guarentees but thought it was worth a shot as he doesn't know what else to do for me. I have tried meds and either have not worked or couldn't tolerate (and the included flecanide) .The only med that I havn't tried is amiodarone but I chose not to try that one cause of the horrible side effects and long term side effects since I am only in my 30's. I already have a dual chamber PM and he has tweeked the setting quite a bit by setting my lower setting at 80. It seemed to help a little in the beginning but now I feel like i'm having juntional the same as I was before he changed anything.

If anyone has had this done I would like to know if it worked and what the recovery time might be.

Thanks so much!

2 Comments

Same...

by golden_snitch - 2013-02-15 05:02:08

... as any other ablation, just that they use cooling energy instead of radiofrequency power. The tip of the catheter won't move while ablating; because of the cooling energy it's kind of "glued" to the spot that's being ablated. So, some say it's more precise. Good luck!

Inga

Cryo

by judy13 - 2013-02-16 08:02:21

I am on an afib forum and people are having very good luck with cryo. As they don't have to do a whole bunch of little points as with CA, it seems better to me (I think of a CA as picking up a beach grain by grain of sand).

Most ablations are very operator dependent so I would get one where the people do lots of them. Good luck, I hope they can fix the junctional. As I am troubled by it too, I will watch for the results, though I always seem to miss posts.

Judy

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