Hi,
The Ablation Procedure:
Here’s what happened during the ablation surgery. They knocked me out like they did for the TEE test, then they inserted an electrode catheter (thin flexible tubing that has electrodes in it) into my femoral vein (near my groin), and pushed the catheter up into the upper right atrium chamber of my heart. Then they poked the catheter through the interatrial septum (the wall of tissue separating the left and the right atria from each other) and entered the upper left atrium. They used the electrodes to burn the areas in the atrium that were causing the irregular heartbeat. Once that was done, the erratic signals my heart had been sending can’t transmit so the AFib stops. My heart returned to a normal rhythm soon after the procedure was over. While the catheter was still inside the atria, they deployed the Watchman.
The Watchman Procedure:
The Watchman looks like a tiny ball, with hooks on it, and it’s made of titanium. It was inserted into the LAA (the left atrial appendage), which is a little side channel in the atria where blood can pool. The Watchman fastened securely to the walls of the LAA, and (over time) it will get covered with heart tissue. With the appendage sealed off, the blood can’t pool. It just gets sent on its merry way without an extra pause in the LAA.
The next post is about what happened after the surgery. See you then.
Michael
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