Amy has been plagued by a racing, irregular heartbeat this year. She has been hospitalized twice, and has had four other shorter episodes. There are two kinds of problems involved. The first is called atrial flutter, which is when one of the upper four chambers of the heart misfires its electrical circuit, and causes the heart to have a irregular beat (which makes it beat faster). The second is called atrial flutter, which is more common, and harder to treat. It is like aflutter, but arises in the other top chamber of the heart. The cardiologist said Amy had experienced both, but was hoping that the afib was caused by the aflutter, so that the procedure today by solving the aflutter would also cure the afib (confused yet?).
The procedure was called an ablation, which means using heat to create scar tissues that redirect the faulty electrical circuit. The ablation was successful in stopping the problem that caused the aflutter. Unfortunately, he found that the other upper heart chamber had problems of its own, which cause the afib, and these he could not fix today.
The upshot is that she will no longer have any aflutter, but will probably continue to have occasional afib. She will probably be able to control this with medicine. While we were hoping she could get off the meds completely (they make her tired), we are grateful that the problem is halfway solved.
She can do the ablation again (for the other side), but the procedure on that side is more invasive and carries more risk. We will wait and see about that.
Below is a link to a youtube video that illustrates most of what I have tried to explain.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ1vMLPrHnk
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