I’ve read a lot of stories about people having an ablation for atrial fibrillation, and I was wondering if anybody here had any experience with an ablation specifically for atrial flutter.
I (21F) had my first flutter episode back in November and was diagnosed in May/June. Currently, I’m not being treated for it, but I was given the option to have an ablation if I wanted to. My cardiologist and I decided to wait until my anxiety about the flutter and my PVCs wasn’t as extreme so the procedure wasn’t traumatising (they always keep you fully awake). In the past two months, I’ve gone from only one episode a month to one every two weeks more or less. Luckily, it never lasted more than 10 minutes, but it’s been holding me back a lot. It’s gone from being triggered by certain movements to just happening while I’m doing nothing. All this combined has made me think of getting the ablation more and more.
So, I know what the ablation is and I’m no longer terrified of having to feel the flutter when they do the EP study, but I was hoping to hear about anybody who has had it done. I don’t really care for studies, that’s the type of stuff I’ll discuss with my doctor if I do decide to go for it. But just hearing experiences would be nice.
On one hand, I’m sure I could live with it for a while longer. The episodes are short and I don’t get dizzy despite my heart rate going over 200bpm. But on the other, I don’t want to wait until it gets worse. I want to be able to get onto my bike again and not have to worry about needing to stop on the side of the road and sit in the floor. I used to love scuba diving and would hate to never be able to go again (of course I’d have to be cleared by a doctor even if the flutter gets fixed).
Are these just hopeless dreams? Would an ablation help with this? I just want to get back to my old life where I don’t have to think twice before simply bending over to pick up something.
So far, it seems like if we have a single ectopic node, we'd get a regular rhythm. However, in the case of atrial flutter, we can also get an irregular rhythm. I can't confidently justify how that happens.
Thank you.
48M here, experienced symptoms of heart “fluttering” two weeks after my 2nd Pfizer shot. For background, I am physically fit with a low resting heart rate, and have 2+ years of HR data to quantify my HR before the vaccine.
Fortunately(?) for me I was hospitalized for something unrelated and hooked up to the hospital’s HR monitor when I experienced 10-15 seconds of fluttering. They could see the issue and confirmed a Left Atrial Flutter by ordering an echocardiogram. It also detected thickening of my heart in certain areas. My new cardiologist gave me a heart rate monitor to wear on my chest for the next month, the data sent directly to his team.
As far as continuing symptoms go, I have felt periodic discomfort or skipped heartbeats. My resting heart rate is not as low as it used to be. I am interested to hear what the cardiologist says when I see him later this month.
I would be very interested in hearing from other people in any demographic who have experienced this type of symptom in the weeks following their vaccination. You are not alone!
https://preview.redd.it/8dv2lnz79ml71.png?width=2302&format=png&auto=webp&s=e03f33ade2984b07774572a21ce82fc485d4510e
I'm trying to justify this as atrial flutter (which it is). Are these assumption correct:
- right after the QRS complex we get one P-wave (deflected up then down, since the pattern of flutter is circular).
- the next peaked is "notched"—the 1st peak is possibly the T wave, the second one the P-wave (followed by the inverted portion of the P-wave).
Thank you.
Hi Everyone,
I'm pretty new to EKGs. We just finished our cardiology month in Paramedic school.
Anyway. I was discussing arrhythmias with my classmates and I suggested what if we saw an atrial flutter with Premature Atrial Complexes. They suggested that that wouldn't happen because Atrial flutter lacks a P wave. But it has to have at least one P wave amongst the F wave sawtooth patterns in order to conduct to the AV node right? I said that if PACs can exist in Afib why not Atrial Flutter?
This has been bothering me for a while. So I thought I would post it here and see what you guys think.
Thank you so much!
I've been experiencing dizziness and loss of hearing when im walking /standing up/or just sitting up. I went to a clinic today and they did a ECG and it came back with my heart is beating fast but my blood pressure was low like 86 over something like 60(s)? I forgot exactly. But he told me to call 911 if I'm experiencing shortness of breathe or extreme fatigue which kinda has already been happening for thr past week but not to the extreme? Well now I'm anxious as all hell and I feel like I cant fully breathe. But fuck I'll feel like an idiot if I call 911 and they're like eh yeah your the same your just being obnoxious with your anxiety and you wasted our time.Will there be other distinct symptoms other than that if I need to go to the emergency? Halp
I would guess that it either reads as inconclusive or gives a false reading of AFib. Am I right?
F age 60. I was born with a hole in the heart which was discovered in my 30's when I started having 'events'. These events which I now know at age 60 are Atrial flutters. After the discovery of a hole in the heart, I had survery to resolve this.
Still, now and then I would have atrial flutter events. They would happen periodically with months of years between them, and usually sort themselves out quite quickly.
Within the last year I've had several events that lasted a few days which didn't resolve. So I've been taking medication to thin the blood and hopefully prevent this from happening again. The flutter has continued and I'm now looking at having an ablation.
My question is should I look into paying for a sleep apnea study first? I've read there's a significant association with those who have Atrial fibrilation (I understand atrial flutter is different but similar). Now, I don't feel like I have it or I'm not aware of it and I sleep 9.5 hours a night.
I do have a quite severely recessed jaw, I'm mildly overweight with not an insignificant amount of fat around the neck area. This combined with the elevalted thyroid issues and blood pressure readings are making me wonder.
Second question, is an ablation for atrial flutter recommended. I'd love to hear peoples thoughts or any statistics for success.
Ok so for those who dont know what atrial flutter is, its when the top two chambers of the heart are beating at a rapid and irregular pace that could reach up to 300bpm. This all happened when I was 17, and my doctor told me this happens once in every 15-20 years in kids in my age group (I have no idea if this statistic is actually true or not but it was said to me).
It all started on a tuesday night, I was playing dota with my friends and after our game I went upstairs to take a shower and then go to bed. When I got in the shower I felt my chest twitch in a weird way. I did not think much of it and just wrote it off as a muscle spasm. The twitches continued until after I showered but it was late at night and I did not think it was anything serious. I got right into bed and went straight to sleep.
I woke up that morning and I immediately feel the twitches again. It was pretty early in the morning and I still thought it was a muscle spasm and was kinda too tired to care. I got dressed, ate breakfast then drove me and my sister to school. Throughout the day the twitches continued, I didn't say anything about them to anyone until my last class of the day. I was sitting in my AP Bio class and I notice that my vision starts to get spotty as if I have a concussion, and I notice that my chest is getting tighter and its harder to breathe. I ask my friend sitting right next to me to feel my chest and see if my heart beat felt weird. He felt it and immediately said the rhythm was inconsistent. I then go up to my teacher, who used to be a physical therapist, and ask her if she can feel my pulse. She feels it for about a minute and says, "Yeah that isnt right, can someone walk him down to the nurses office?". After being walked down the nurses office, she listens to my heartbeat and immediately asks me for my parents phone numbers. I give it to her and as she calls my parents other nurses in training each listened to my heart and they all confirmed that it was beating irregularly.
My parents then pick me up and take me straight to my pediatrician. She listens to it for about a minute and her eyes grow wide. She leaves for a minute and gets a colleague for a second opinion. Her colleague confirms that she hears it too and they both call the hospital and arrange me a check up with a heart specialist.
(This is where I knew shit was getting actually serious.)
The heart specialist hooks me up to an EKG machine and gives me a couple of ultrasounds on my heart
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hi - 42 yo white female, 5'1" 135 lbs. I've been told I have low potassium a couple times after blood tests - the first I was in labor with my son at the hospital (unsure of blood serum level), anesthesiologist alerted me to it before an epidural and I attributed it to pregnancy (though I did not have nausea or throw up at all my entire pregnancy), that was October 2019. The second time was after when I went to the ER back in April for what felt like heart flutters for a couple days, alongside diarrhea, only lasting seconds long and at random -- it felt like atrial flutter or AFIB. I was very scared I had coronavirus and got a rapid nose swab test which was negative -- I read it causes GI symptoms and palpitations. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, I have no heart conditions and am relatively healthy -- and the timing of my issues, at the same time of the pandemic, caused me to be very paranoid that I had coronavirus. I was only at a 3.4 potassium serum level, mild hypokalemia. EKG was normal and they gave me a potassium pill and something for anxiety. ER doc attributed it to potassium loss through diarrhea and anxiety from the pandemic and told me to drink gatorade. The only medication I was taking was ursodiol at the time it happened. I was really hoping it was just an electrolyte imbalance and something very benign. Perhaps it was potassium excretion/loss from breastfeeding my toddler my entire pregnancy, and postpartum I've been breastfeeding both my toddler and baby, sometimes together. I also had three tooth abscesses, so maybe possible bacteria from that. Can anxiety and/or gastrointestinal and bile issues cause the heart to do that? I read it's rare, but can mild hypokalemia cause atrial flutter? Does this happen to other people? Or perhaps it was a stomach/GI virus causing palpitations -- but that had never happened to me my whole life. The only issues I know of with me is gallstones (multiple), cholestasis or itching from low bile or biliary sludge that I was taking ursodiol for only a couple months because I didn't want surgery. I'm a high anxiety person and discontinued ursodiol immediately thinking the flutters were a side effect. I was having weird heart palpitations (skips) the following weeks after my anxiety went through the roof obsessing over this, worried something was wrong, similar to a panic attack (which I've had), though I'm fine now. Also worried it was something postpartum. And then I was hoping it wasn't HBP iss
... keep reading on reddit ➡There is a 56 yo male who is in his first episode of atrial flutter with symptoms starting on Friday
His meds are: metoprolol, levothyroxine, and sertraline
He has lost 40 pounds in the past month or so due to starting a ketogenic diet
His chadsvasc score is 1 due to having hypertension today (131/97)
The cardiologist is recommending lifelong anticoagulation once he is converted out of it, and I asked if he is able to get his blood pressure under control if he could go off of blood thinners later on
His response was that it was a tough question and he liked to go on the side of caution and chronically anticoagulate
I’m just a pharmacy student but my thinking is his BP was potentially raised due to the stress of the situation and he was never previously diagnosed with HTN, and in just having a score of 1 would just 4 weeks of a anticoagulation post conversion be okay?
And if not, if he is able to get his blood pressure under control could he potentially come of his blood thinners later down the road?
Thanks
I am near my 30s and recently underwent catheter ablation for restoring my heart to its normal rhythm. But since then I've been feeling exhausted all the time. And I can't shake off this feeling of death being near.
Earlier as well I knew something was wrong with my body before my atrial flutter was diagnosed, which makes me doubly scared
Age 27, male, 5'11, 317 lbs., 2 months quit smoking. Atrial flutter, asthma, generalized anxiety disorder. I just got back from the hospital I was there for 3 days. I went in because my heart rate was at 188 bpm. They have had me on a mix the whole time of both in pill form and in an IV of metoprolol and diltiazem, and have prescribed them to me as well. I was reading on my medications and it says neither of them should be mixed due to interactions between the two causing increased side effects. Its bothering me thinking about it and I have severe anxiety even taking medications. Is this a common mixture? Do I need to be worried and contact my doctor?
I suspect that is EKG Either an atrial flutter or a sinus tachycardia.
Ekg image https://imgur.com/a/dB5mnKU
A reason for flutter is that this EKG is at 150 bpm possibly due to 2:1 AV conduction. Also the waves kinda look sawtooth-like.
However, this also looks very strikingly similar to sinus tachycardia perhaps with 150 bpm and maybe a T wave inversion.
Hopefully, someone can give me some pointers on how to differentiate them.
