- Hey, I'm Dr. Morales
and I've treated thousands of patients
with atrial fibrillation,
and I have been doing catheter ablation procedures
for almost a decade now.
And I'm gonna talk about, in this video,
how you can improve your success rate
for an ablation procedure.
Now, you may be looking about information
about catheter ablation procedures,
you may be reading online, looking at the success rate
for a catheter ablation procedure.
And you've probably seen a lot of
the same statistics that I have seen,
and the same statistics that are out there,
that for most people with paroxysmal AFib,
where the AFib comes and goes
and you're not an AFib all the time,
that range is the highest,
and that range can be anywhere from, you know,
70 to 80% success rate.
People who are in more persistent atrial fibrillation,
or in AFib all the time,
certainly have a lower success rate.
That success rate may be anywhere from 50 to 70%
from the ablation procedure.
So you may see these numbers
and you say, gosh, these success rates are not that great.
Or, how can I make my success better?
What do I need to do?
Is it the doctors or something that I can do?
So this is what I'm gonna talk about during this video.
I'm gonna talk about things that you can do
to help improve the success rate
for your ablation procedure.
I'm gonna talk about things that are
before the ablation procedure,
during the ablation procedure,
as well as after the ablation procedure.
Things that all that you can do
to help improve your success rate
for better long term success.
So first, let's talk about before the ablation procedure.
Is there anything that you can do
before an ablation procedure
to help improve the success rate
for your ablation procedure?
And the top tip there would be
to get an ablation done as soon as possible.
I couldn't tell you how many patients tell me like,
oh, an ablation didn't work,
or I knew somebody who had an ablation done
and it didn't work for them.
But it's all comparing apples and oranges, you know?
How long somebody has been in atrial fibrillation
significantly has a huge impact
on whether that ablation is gonna work or not.
The longer somebody has atrial fibrillation,
the worst the success rate
for a catheter ablation procedure.
There's even been studies that looked at this,
and I'll put the link underneath this video.
There's a study that's showing that people
who have atrial fibrillation for less than a year
are gonna be in the higher spectrum for success rate
when it comes to the success with an ablation procedure.
So definitely time is very important
for before the ablation procedures.
So if you've been struggling with AFib for years now
and you're, gosh, should I get an ablation or not,
or should I wait a few years?
The sooner you get it, the better.
And that is gonna be a very important key thing
that helps you improve the success rate
for your ablation procedure, is gonna be timing.
Now, does it mean that you need to do it right away,
the moment you get diagnosed,
you need to get an ablation procedure done the next week?
No, not at all, but, again, like I said,
studies have shown that within about
a year or so from diagnosis is really
when you're gonna get the best success rate
from a catheter ablation procedure.
So what about during the procedure?
Is there anything that you can do
to help improve your success rate
from the ablation procedure?
Some of that would be making sure
you pick the doctor and hospitals
who have a lot of experience with dealing with AFib.
They're doing ablations now for a decade
so I can tell you there certainly is something there
to having enough experience
and having done this on many, many patients by now.
So, certainly experienced centers would be very important.
However, I get a lot of questions about
what type of energy I use, what type of energy is best.
If you've been doing research on AFib ablations,
you may see there's definitely very different methods
to do the ablation procedure.
The most common and long lasting one
is something called radiofrequency.
That is something that's more commonly called
like a burning energy.
There's also a freezing energy as well.
Freezing energy is more technically is called a cryoballoon.
And then one other one that I've mentioned
is in studies right now,
has a lot of promise for coming down the road,
something called pulse field electroporation.
There's studies are actually been very encouraging
right now, in terms of it effectively ablating
the area that wants to be ablated.
However, you know, does it matter which type you get?
Does it matter whether you get burning, freezing,
or should you wait for the clinical trials
for this newer energy to be completed?
Honestly, right now in my opinion
would be that it doesn't matter.
A lot of this equipment for catheter ablation procedures
changes every year.
You know, I tell my patients that
the equipment for AFib changes like iPhones,
every year there's something new,
some new advancement that comes out.
The ablation is equipment is so good
that I really haven't had to do
too many repeat ablation procedures on patients.
I actually put a huge emphasis
on what I mentioned in the first part,
which is the timing for somebody.
I actually put a huge emphasis on my patients
to get them in and ablated as soon as possible
after they're first diagnosed.
And because of that,
I'm not doing too many repeat procedures.
So, again, that timing of when you get an ablation procedure
is probably more important
than which type of energy your doctor uses,
whether that's a burning method, freezing method,
or new other research type of protocols,
whether that's that post field electroporation,
there's also some laser balloons as well.
So there's a few different energy options, but again,
your timing is probably gonna
give you more better success rate,
how long you've had AFib,
than the actual energy or style to the doctor uses
during the procedure itself.
Last thing to talk about is what you can do
after the ablation procedure.
Now, this is actually something
that can be extremely beneficial.
Some people may have an AFib ablation
and it does well for several months, or maybe a year,
and you start seeing AFib starts coming back again.
And that's when lifestyle modifications
can be extremely important.
You know, I often tell my patients that
ablation procedures are great short term plans,
they will rapidly improve your symptoms of AFib,
they may rapidly decrease some of the medications you have,
but if you want the ablation procedure to last
and to work for years or even decades to come,
then lifestyle modifications are extremely important.
For most people that will involve weight loss.
Weight loss can be extremely important
to reduce inflammation, to improve blood pressure,
and ultimately improve AFib for the long term.
Also things such as treating sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is something that
significantly affects AFib as well,
so if you're untreated for sleep apnea,
treating that can also improve your long term success rate
from an ablation procedure.
And another important thing would be alcohol reduction,
or cessation.
There have been clear studies that have shown
that people who drink on a regular basis,
and it doesn't have to be somebody
who just drinks a lot and gets intoxicated,
Even people who drink every day like, oh
I have a glass of wine every day,
they can also have significant impact on their AFib.
And so a significant reduction in that alcohol
can also make a significant improvement in your AFib.
And this has all been studied
in the setting of ablation procedure.
So whether that's weight loss, treating sleep apnea,
or alcohol reduction or cessation,
those all also improved the success rate
of the actual ablation procedure.
So, if you want your ablation procedure to last
for many years, or even decades to come,
lifestyle modifications are extremely important.
Now, I've actually have created my own program
that puts an emphasis on these lifestyle modifications,
called the Take Control Over AFib program,
where I will give you the step by step plan
to get everything you need
to improve atrial fibrillation naturally,
that can help improve your symptoms for atrial fibrillation,
it can may even reduce your need
for having an ablation procedure.
And even if you do need an ablation procedure
it'll help improve the success rate
of that ablation procedure for many years,
or even decades to come.
So if you wanna learn more about the
Take Control Over AFib program,
just take a look underneath this video.
There'll be a link to the to the signup page
where you can learn more about the program itself,
as well as see testimonials from people
who have actually signed up for the program as well,
and see how they felt about the program.
So take a look and I'll see you next time in my next video