At the last EP visit we talked a lot about ablations, what to expect, etc. Ablation is scheduled in about 7.5 weeks. In the course of this, he told me he does roughly 2 (two) ablations per week.
Is this an ok number?
Talking to my wife last night she said I should call the other main hospital here where they do ablations and see how many their guys do to get some sense of whether he has the chops, so to speak. Says he's done ~500 since 2005.
I'm no expert, but as they take 4 hours plus on average, and the EP will be doing other things too I would say that is a good average.
You wouldn't want to be the third ablation to be done in a day
Good point, I never thought about it like that. There are only so many hours in a day/week and he has to meet patients at his offices, etc.
I agree with your wife, certainly worth asking. Apart from some consultations what else would an EP be doing?
My ablations have taken anything from 4 - 7 hours. On more than one occasion I was taken from the ward at about 8.30 in the morning and did not come to until mid - late afternoon.
Needless to say they also have to prepare the Cath. Lab prior to you arriving and to tidy up and sanitise afterwards.
This means that one case often occupies one Cath Lab all day.
Cath. Labs are also used for implanting pacemakers and stents so an EP may not get the availabilty to do more than 2 - 4 a week tops due to the demand. It depends on the hospital and how many Cath. Labs they have and how many EPs are at the hospital. For example there are 4 EP consulatants at my hospital. all are vying for the use of the Cath. Labs.
Additionally your EP will have outpatients consultation at least once if not twice a week. Add that all to their other responsibilities I would think that 2 is about on average.
At the end of the day I totally understand that you are anxious. If your EP has been doing ablations for 13 years you should be able to find some information about him on the Internet. For example they often also practice privately and on their resumé on the Nuffield, Bupa or Spire etc. websites they would tend to list their achievements.
The other thing is to consider how good the facilities are at the hospital. There are certainly centres of excellence where the investment is greater and therefore they have state of the art equipment such as 3D mapping equipment. It would be worth investigating this.
Hope this gives you some guidance.
Pete
Some ablations obviously take longer than others, according to our local EPs the average ablation now takes about 1-2 hours and they now have a dedicated, state of the art cath lab - but certainly until about 2 years ago sharing cath labs was the limiting factor.
As you say - it very much depends if they have state of the art equipment and good resources. I know part of the reason my ablation took so long was that the Mapping System failed, then 2 catheters broke! That was some time ago and things have now improved!
I also suspect that choosing younger, generally fitter patients with none established AF patterns helps!
I think afafaf is American? So maybe different circumstances.
I know this hospital is said to be a good one, but a different local hospital is also good. My wife also had a glowing testimony from someone who had a procedure (not an afib ablation, but something similar) done at the other one which succeeded where several procedures at my hospital failed so I think this is where the doubts came in.
It’s all down to the skill of the EP coupled with the equipment they have at their disposal.
Pete
I think they have decent equipment, this is in the US in a pretty progressive area so should be fine on that score.
Personally - I would have thought not. I was advised - by my EP - that most modern EPs would be expecting to do about a thousand a year - ie 2 a day, at 2 a week he probably wouldn’t do a hundred a year. Some of the older EPs in the U.K. would have that sort of record as there want the cath labs etc available but nowadays. I also think it is more a younger persons speciality - steadier hand.
More relevant questions to ask may be - what is their first time success rate? What is their complication rate?
This doctor is in his 40s, I'd say. I think he said his first time success rate was around 76%.
Is there a site you can look him and the hospital up? There is nothing better than doing your homework, good recommendations and thorough research.
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