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My brother went into the hospital (University of Michigan) this morning for something called heart ablation. It seems he suffers from something called atrial fibrillation. That’s when the heart is irregularly (usually between 60 and 100 times a minute); the abnormal heartbeats are called arrhythmias. Atrial fibrillation got its name because the atria (the heart’s upper chambers) send rapidly firing electrical signals that cause them to quiver, rather than contract normally. The result is an abnormally fast and/or irregular heartbeat.
The ablation procedure destroys carefully selected heart muscle cells in a very small area (about 1/5 of an inch). This stops the area from conducting the extra impulses that caused the rapid heartbeats.
According to my father, which he got from my nephew, the surgeon said the procedure went very well. He said they wouldn’t know if the operation was successful for six month. (That’s a bummer.)
Lord willing, he will return to his normal schedule this Friday.
The other sibling, my sister, just underwent a colonoscopy. They trimmed the shrubbery and she is completely recovered.
I would have live blogged the events, but I was on-site at a client getting them up and running.
Posted by Ted at January 25, 2005 9:04 PMThanks for the info - my father-in-law just underwent the ablation procedure last week. Thus far, he's doing really very well. Keeping our fingers crosed!
Posted by: jayseae at January 26, 2005 4:10 PM