palpitations after ablation?

[Del822]

Its been 9 and a half weeks since my ablation for avnrt svt.  I have been having pvcs causing those flutters and thuds since my ablation but lately it's been worse. A couple days ago i kept getting runs of pvcs that scared me all night then they went away the next day with only a couple here and there. Then the day after i was driving and under some stress when i had another big thud i started feeling really scared and i felt my pulse right after and it was fine then a couple seconds later my heart started racing and beating hard i panicked and after 5 to 10 seconds it cut out. I've been so stressed the ablation didn't work i called my doctor and she isn't in until next week. I already have a bad anxiety problem and this is just driving me nuts. Anyone else have this problem before?

[MichelleP_3811]

I think it is quite common to experience a rise in ectopics after an ablation.  I thought that I felt as though I was having more ectopics after my ablation but in truth I may just have not really been aware that they are 2 different issues that feed off each other.  It is the pause after a properly time pvc that allows the signal in avnrt to complete the loop around the avnode.  I was having daily symptoms feeling my heart prior to the ablation as well as having weekly svt episodes but in my nativity I didn't think to ask what I was feeling that was different than my svt.   After the ablation all I felt was the ectopic activity.   Not knowing the dynamics of the ectopic beast and svt I of course got stressed and scared me to no end which only made the situation worse.  This said, though I felt runs of something they didn't feel the same as my svt.  Do your runs feel the same as before the ablation? If not it is very likely a run of pacs or even just a bit of anxiety.  For me it took a year for the ectopics to calm down to something less intrusive and another year for them to get to the point I don't feel them much longer.  Stress and anxiety very well played into this.  This said, if things feel exactly the same as when you have the svt then ask for a monitor to try and catch it.  It may be possible that they didn't quite get it all, cut off the extra pathway enough, and you may need a follow up ablation to get it fixed. But if it is just a run of pacs then more than likely, with some time away from having svt episodes your heart will calm down and the ectopics will ease up even if you can't seem to get past the anxiety of it.  It does, unfortunately, take a lot of time for that to occur, especially for those of us prone to anxiety but things will improve as you heart has more time to heal from years of svt episodes.  Take care and keep us posted on how you are doing.  

[Del822]

That makes me feel better i just didn't want to give up on the ablation yet I've felt better for a couple months afterwards i just would hate to go back to feeling like a time bomb again but nobody is perfect especially after a heart procedure

[tom_h]

I don't think there's one of us here that had an ablation for SVT, and never felt another thing afterwards.  We ALL had some bumps in the road during our recovery.  You may feel this for up to and beyond a year.  I had a week of severe jumbled up SVT and PVC's 8 months after mine.  I had never experienced anything like it in my 54 year of dealing with SVT.  But that disappeared and I was fine again.  Episodes of SVT should be short lived; perhaps a dozen beats or so.  Any sustained runs of SVT COULD be a sign that your ablation was not completely successful.  I believe that ablation process requires a lot of skill, and that there's a lot of room for the electrophysiologist's technique.  In other words, it's not cut and dry.  It's not success or failure, but a lot of room in between for partial.  Give it lots more time before you make the call on your procedure.