Post Ablation

[BC50]

I have had 2 ablations. After my 2nd it seems when I lay on my left side I hear a tick tick tick noise. Not sure it is from the throat or slightly lower. If I turn over on my right side the tick noise seems to be gone. Has anyone experience anything close to this? Thanks

[BobD Volunteer]

Is this pulsatile tinitus where you can hear your heart beat in your ears? Quite common for us AFers

[Ppiman]

Do you mean in your ears or a physical noise? I have had the latter and it brought the whole medical practice to rush in and listen to it when it happened with them all scratching their heads and one claiming it to be a prosthetic valve (which I don't have)! It seems the diaphragm muscle can touch the heart and act like an echo chamber!

Steve

[BC50 in reply to Ppiman]

It is a noise. I don't have a valve either. It is when I am lying on my left side. So was the conclusion it was the diaphragm touching the heart?

[Ppiman in reply to BC50]

Yes - it was proven, too. I was rushed off to our local hospital (this was many years ago, now), where a cardiologist had come, as he explained leaving his breakfast behind, to see what it was all about. Goodness knows why such a thing piqued such interest. Anyway, he said he thought I might have a collapsed lung called a pneumothorax, something that right itself naturally, so would be nothing to fear. In the end, however, after an X-ray, he said it was nothing of the sort and was, instead, my stomach pushing my diaphragm against my heart to create an echo chamber with the air trapped in the stomach. I'd have expected a "slap-slap" sound, myself, but it was a "click-click" that I was getting, almost as loud as clicking the thumb and third finger. Strange indeed.

It righted itself and never returned, and it only ever happened when I was lying as you describe. What never righted itself was a lifetime of worrying ectopic beats but even they were of no consequence until my mid sixties when atrial flutter, and now atrial fibrillation came my way.

Steve