Anybody here successfully treat their A-Fib with medication alone? For years even?
What do you mean by ‘successfully’? Staying out of afib by using meds? Keeping the rate controlled with meds? Yes, both can occur, but the latter is more likely than the former.
But for more informed discussion, can you tell more about your particular situation/concerns?
I suffered a bout of AFib earlier this year. I spent two nights in the hospital but they could not stop it with meds, only slow it down. They ended up using a “cardio-version” treatment, a trickle of electricity from front to back of my chest right through my heart. That zapped me back into proper rhythm. Ever since then (about seven months) I’ve been taking beta-blockers, which keeps me pretty much in normal rhythm. I also cut way down on my caffeine intake, and stopped carrying my cell phone in my shirt pocket (just in case).
(I was already on anticoagulants for other purposes, so that wasn’t an issue.)
Very similar experience. Mine was almost 2 years ago, and I was put on medication for several months with the expectation that that might do the trick. It didn’t. Did the cardioverion thing and it worked like a charm. Been good ever since.
Prep time and check in for the procedure gook several hours, but the actual procedure is done in a matter of seconds, or less. I was sedated, although not general anesthesia. Prior to the procedure, my resting heart rate was about 80 - 90 bpm. Afterwards, it’s been 50 - 60. The change was, literally, like flipping a switch.
I did not get any info from my cardiologist about how common it was for medication alone to get you back in good rhythm, so I have no idea whether it’s a realistic option.
My AFib acted up over 10 years ago. They tried to reboot my heart, and failed. My cardiologist gave me something to reset it (though it hardly ever worked) and rescheduled me for another go. When I came for it, my AFib was gone, temporarily at least.
Since then I’m on Dilitaizem and Warfarin, and I’m down to cardiologist visits only every two years. I have no symptoms except very occasional fibrillation that I can feel. I get my INR checked every 6 weeks, and it is always right in the middle of the acceptable range.
My blood pressure and everything else is very good, I’m not over weight, and my LDL cholesterol is way low without medication.
So don’t despair. It doesn’t have to mess you up.
By “success” I mean stopping (or substantially reducing) episodes of A-fib.
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Mine cured itself. I can’t really explain it. It would happen periodically for seconds up to minutes. Then one time it wouldn’t stop and I went to the hospital. I was there overnight and in the morning it was gone. I can’t tell you exactly when it went away but it did. Now maybe a couple of times a year at most I will feel a couple of irregular beats and that’s it.
Always make sure your potassium intake is enough. Lack of potassium can lead to irregular heartbeat. When I was in the hospital that one time the only thing they found that was wrong was that my potassium level was very low.
I underwent an ablation. It worked. So far. It has been three years since ablation.
I had heart valve repair 2 years ago and apparently I go into Afib without knowing it. I ended up with a 3.5 inch blood clot in my heart. I found this out after a piece broke off and went to my leg. It clotted the entire length of the leg and I was in the hospital for 2 weeks getting rid of it as well as the clot in my heart.
Long story short I’m on blood thinner for the rest of my life.
Magiver, just out of curiosity was the clot in your leg like a sudden thing like you woke up one morning and your whole leg was discolored or did it start small and spread. Just curious. Did you feel anything odd prior to the clot appearing?
It was progressive. Exactly this time last year I had trouble walking any distances. It would start in my calf muscle and the entire lower leg would then ache like the worst shin splints. I thought it might be a clot and had a scan of my leg done. They only scanned the vein side of the leg because that is where blood clots usually start. It got worse to the point a walk of 100 feet would require laying down for 30 minutes yet I could walk 15 feet with reasonable success. The pain would get rapidly worse with the distance traveled. I eventually had the artery side of the leg scanned and by that time there was no discernible pulse in my leg. That was 2 months later so there’s your time line.
4 days of repeated surgery for the leg and 10 days of drug therapy to dissolve the clot in my heart.
There was no discoloration just an ever increasing amount of pain when walking. If I wasn’t walking it didn’t hurt.
Just as an aside, if it gets that bad your leg will be colder than the other leg. You should also be able to easily feel your pulse by pressing your fingers across the top of your foot.
I did not know there was any treatment for it. Maybe there weren’t in 2005 when mine was diagnosed. I have been on blood thinners since. First warfarin, now something call eliquis. Which I had to suspend for two days before a colonoscopy.
I’ve had paroxysmal atrial fibrillation for at least 10 years now. I call it “wonky heart syndrome”. I’m on Bisoprolol Fumarate, Flecainide Acetate, and aspirin. I still get occasional wonkiness but it’s mild and lasts from a few minutes to several hours.
Since last posting in this thread almost exactly a year ago my at-fib has become more frequent and longer lasting. The dosage of the medications I’m on can’t be increased so I’m going in for an ablation next week.
There are a few things that matter a lot when considering how to treat atrial fibrillation. In addition to age, presence of diabetes, high blood pressure, 'congestive heart failure", and history of a stroke or TIA, there’s also patient preference and quality of life, with both the atrial fibrillation and its treatment affecting the latter.
By the way, the risks of stroke from atrial fibrillation - the big risk that gets most of the attention - is no different whether you are fibrillating continuously or intermittently (or even ‘occasionally’).
This is not a one size fits all disease. What works and what is best for an otherwise healthy 50-year-old with atrial fibrillation is likely very different than what works in an 80-year-old whose a fib is just one of his problems.
Off topic somewhat, and I am not asking you to respond, but I predict that many of the folks around here with a fib are also using thyroxine. Even very mild degrees of over-supplementation can precipitate atrial fibrillation. It’s not even clear to me that we shouldn’t be monitoring the heart in patients on thyroxine and not their TSH.
I was on Propafenone for afib for around 5 years, had no problems. It came back, so I had ablation. Been good for another 5 years. Mine seemed related to alcohol use / abuse (Holiday heart). Gave up the booze prior to the ablation.
Mrs. Watering has Afib pretty much all the time. She did undergo cardioversion, but it didn’t work. Her cardiologist put her on Eliquis, and he’s asked her to consider the Watchman procedure, which is a method for closing off the left atrial appendage to prevent clots/stroke.
I’m wondering why he doesn’t recommend ablation.
I had a bout of it several years ago, but Amiodarone (spelling sort of guessed at) stopped it within two days. It came back last year, but in a much milder fore, called A-Flutter), which has been controlled with another pill, and all seems to be ok.
A-fib is not a death sentence, even if the doctors are unable to control it. A very good 50 YO friend of mine has had a bad case since he was an adolescent, and has been zapped with electricity eleven times without any improvement. Pills do nothing. He gets along fine, and has been working as a caretaker on an island in the Washington San Juan Islands for the past four or five years. Lots of physical exercise doing that, I guarantee.
Not related specifically to the OP’s question about meds only, but related to the clot risk: just in the past week or so I heard about a new implanted device called Watchman - which as I understand it blocks off the part of the heart where clots are most likely to form. My father-in-law (age 83) had this done yesterday.
In theory, this should allow a patient to come off of warfarin after about 6 weeks (dunno if FIL was on that, but he’s got so many health issues it wouldn’t surprise me).
I guess I don’t know what acute a-fib is. I was diagnosed with a-fib in 2005 and have taken blood thinners since. But I have been totally symptomless. It was diagnosed with a cardiogram and an ultrasound. I also have a pacemaker, but that is unrelated AFAIK.