I had an open heart surgery several years ago and everything seemed to be going ok. On my last checkup, my heart doc saw I was in Afib. Immediately put me on thinners and solatol. I met with another doc who will be doing a cardiac ablation on me. Can anyone tell me what to expect? BTW, if you don't have a Kardia mobile, you should get one. It tells me immediately if I'm in Afib.

So what do you do when you go into Afib?

I have not done it..........yet. I have looked into it though and it was explained to me that I would go to a electrophysiologist first that would do a mapping of the electrical signals in the heart and identify the ones that are causing the problem. Once they identify the problem area they go in either through a vein in the groin or in some cases a vein in your wrist and "kill" the electrical signals that are causing the problem by Cauterization.

My issue is a little different than Afib so the procedure may be slightly different but in a nut shell thats pretty much how it goes.

My 67 year old brother did it about three months ago. He was almost continuously in Afib and they said he was a serious risk for stroke at any moment. They went in between his ribs, I believe in two locations. It was four hour procedure for him and he is really happy. Zero Afib now and he was shocked at how much energy he suddenly has.

The doc said he would insert two catheters in my left leg and one in my right and meet at the heart. A 4 to 5 hour procedure but should be back to work in a week with no stipulations. I'm just ready to get it over with. Thanks for all the responses, it's appreciated.

My son had one done at about 10 years old for Wolf Parkinson's (an extra connection from your brain to your heart that causes the heart to race uncontrollably. Undetected this is what kills a lot of young athletes when they die suddenly from a heart problem). It fixed his heart, he is 27 and healthy with our 2 little grand kiddos. Took a couple of hours and an overnight stay in the hospital but he was up and good in just a day or 2.

Good Luck Copperhead. Prayers for a speedy recovery!

Just went through this with my wife. She was diagnosed with a fib during another dr appt, ended up in the er and an overnight stay. sent home the next day since she self-corrected. Gave her some new drugs to start. 4 days later we were back in the er, sent home again since she responded to the meds and 4 days later back in the er. This time she was transferred to Presby in Dallas and ended up getting an ablation. Like others said the procedure was easy with an incision in the groin area. She is doing great and feels 100% better.

Son had it in his early teens. His heart would start racing, he'd start having SVT's, and it would take forever to come back down to normal. Since he's an athlete, and the events usually only happened during sports, we spent months trying to catch the event on all kinds of different heart monitors. Try as hard as we could, they just don't stay on a person that is playing sports where they are running, jumping and sweating all over the place. We would stick on the monitor, wrap his chest in tape and it would still come off after about 10 minutes

Surgery was through the leg like others have said. They would cause an event, find the bad pathway and zap the area. Repeat the process until they couldn't make it happen again. I think they zapped his heart in 8-10 spots and the procedure took almost 8 hours. He spent the night in the hospital and was home the next day. He was back to sports with-in the week and it was a night and day difference (no more shortness of breath, no more tiredness ...). He wanted to start playing the day after surgery, but had to sit out a week to make sure the incision marks on his thigh healed up. The hospital stay was funny because he was 6'2" and they didn't really have any beds in the kids ward for someone his size. So he laid in bed with his feet hanging off the end.