The Goals of Cardiac Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation

Featuring Dr. Atul Verma, MD, FRCPC, Cardiologist Southlake Regional Health Centre

Duration: 1 minutes, 35 seconds

Ultimately, what are the long-term goals of atrial fibrillation ablation? Well, if we can get rid of your atrial fibrillation, the goals are to improve your quality of life by reducing the symptoms and suffering you have from atrial fibrillation, improving your exercise tolerance, and perhaps also improving your heart function to reverse your heart failure, if this is something that you have before the ablation procedure.

We also hope that we can eliminate some of the medications that you’re on if you have a successful ablation. In particular, antiarrhythmic drugs are drugs that we will usually routinely try to stop if you have a successful ablation procedure. We may not be able to stop your blood thinners, even after a successful ablation procedure, because as of yet, we do not know what your ongoing risk of stroke is. So we tend to be fairly conservative about the blood thinners.

If you have any more questions about your atrial fibrillation or whether you may be a potential candidate for ablation for your atrial fibrillation, feel free to contact your local health professional, your cardiologist, or have them refer you to the heart rhythm program here at Southlake Regional Health Centre, where we’ll be happy to do a consultation.

Presenter: Dr. Atul Verma, Electrophysiologist, Montreal, QC

Local Practitioners: Electrophysiologist