What happens during ablation for Atrial Fibrillation

An ablation for atrial fibrillation will be done at a specialist hospital. You will come in the morning of the procedure. You'll be taken down to the cardiac theatre, what's called the catheter laboratory where these procedures are done. There are lots of people who are involved in the procedure, the cardiologist doing the procedure, a radiographer who takes the images with the x-ray, the cardiac technicians who are looking at the signals and the screens seeing what's happening in the heart and helping the cardiologist, there are the nursing staff who are helping, the anaesthetic team who are helping to keep you sedated or asleep. You'll be lying flat on a table and the anaesthetist will sedate you or put you to sleep and then access will be gained from the vein in your leg and wires and catheters will be passed up to your heart to the atria. It is here where a map can be made and the procedure of either burning or freezing away the electrical signals will be done in the heart at that stage. This This will then, once done, will be taken out, you'll be woken up, you'll be in a recovery room and then you'll go back to your hospital bed. You'll likely either go home that evening or stay the night and there you'll then have follow up with your doctor afterwards from that procedure. The main risk from the procedure we discussed, but it's very important that you're careful from the access point in your leg and we usually tell people not to drive for a week and not to do any heavy lifting for at least a couple of days just to protect the leg because you'll be on blood thinners after your procedure.