Choosing your Doctor for Atrial Fibrillation

Choosing a doctor for a catheter ablation of AF is really quite simple. We would recommend that you ask 4 questions:

1. How many AF ablations do you do a year. Ask them to be specific about ablations of AF because this is technically much more challenging than other catheter ablation. If your doctor does less than 50 AF ablations a year they are less likely to be as practiced. There is no evidence to prove this as yet but this has certainly been our experience.
   
   
2. What technique do you use. There are a number of techniques that appear to be effective but they have to be performed in the left atrium if they are to be successful. For persistent AF pulmonary vein isolation alone is not as effective as introducing linear lesions. If the doctor says they only ablate in the right atrium then you are probably with the wrong person.
   
   
3. What facilities do you have? Having advanced mapping equipment that can use 3 dimensional images can definitely help improve the procedure results. It is also important that there are facilities to perform cardiothoracic surgery in case a leak develops in the heart and it cannot be solved by using a needle to drain the fluid.
   
   
4. What are your results? If the doctors do not collect and publish their results then they are best avoided. If they have cure rates of less than 60% after redo procedures then again you will probably find better units.

Remember that treatment of AF is rarely an emergency and can be complex. It is much better to travel to a high volume, high quality unit and get treated well than to travel a short distance and have a poor quality procedure.

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Choosing a Doctor - A Quick Overview