Atrial Fibrillation Symptoms & Treatment in New Albany, IN

Atrial fibrillation, commonly known AFib, is the most common form of cardiac arrhythmia, which means irregular heart rhythm. The top chambers, the atria, they no longer contract, they just quiver. That impacts the filling aspect of the heart because the heart needs to fill in order to pump. It impacts how much blood goes into the heart, so overall performance goes down.

By far the most common symptom is they don't have to get up and go. They just feel fatigued throughout the day. The treatment of AFib, there are a set of medicines called antiarrhythmic drugs. They help maintain normal rhythm.

Ablation is obviously the more robust way of managing AFib. That's a catheter based procedure. One of them is an ultrasound, so we visualize the heart at all times. And the first thing we do is we map, which is recreating recreating the three d anatomy of the heart.

That map will be displayed on one of the screens. Once we're happy with the map, then we start the ablation, which is electrically isolating the areas that are promoting AFib. Those are the pulmonary veins, which are the structures that bring blood back to the heart from the lungs. When we get people out of AFib, restore normal rhythm, it's amazing how good they feel.

All these symptoms go away, so that's why quality of life is definitely number one when it comes to AFib treatments.