JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Cardiologists at Ascension St. Vincent’s are celebrating a transformative way they are treating patients with atrial fibrillation (a-fib).
They are now doing two crucial procedures at the same time.
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One man who got that treatment recently says he can now get back to doing the things he loves without worrying.
Stephen Sullivan is 76 years old. He loves riding his motorcycle, traveling and spending time with his wife, Sarah, of 50 years.
“I feel good,” Sullivan said.
That is because Sullivan says within the last month he got two procedures done at Ascension St. Vincent’s in Jacksonville’s Riverside neighborhood on the same day to treat his a-fib.
It was a journey that started back in 2012.
“I woke up. My heart was running about 160 beats a minute and it stayed that way for a while,” Sullivan said. “They actually had to shock me and put me back into rhythm. I have had triple bypass surgery. I have had stents in my heart.”
The combined procedure eliminates a-fib for patients by using high energy pulses that do not use any heat, and it causes tissue to turn directly into scar that they are trying to get rid of.
Doctors are also plugging up the part of the heart that’s a source for blood clots with what’s called a watchman.
“It was painless,” Sullivan said. “No downtime basically after a day or two of just taking it easy.”
A-fib is an irregular and most times rapid heart rhythm that can typically lead to blood clots in the heart. In most cases, it significantly increases the chance for someone to have a stroke.
Dr. Saumil Oza with Ascension St. Vincent’s considers this new method revolutionary because he is able to treat way more patients earlier, faster and believes the procedure is safer.
“We don’t have to do invasive things to do the procedure such as intubation or put a breathing tube down,” Oza said. “We can just do it with placing a mask over the mouth and putting them to sleep. It is more like a colonoscopy than like open heart surgery. That allows us to not have of the different side effects such as pain around the heart, dangers of damaging the esophagus, dangers of damaging any nerves around the heart. Those are all eliminated.”
It is a procedure Sullivan says was worth it.
“I feel better about it and everything else,” Sullivan said. “Hopefully that problem is taken care of. Super people. The whole cardiac section [at Ascension St. Vincent’s] has been good. I’ve been dealing with them for years and years and years. They take care of you and they are concerned about you. That is the big thing.”
“They are able to have their lives back with very minimal discomfort,” Oza said about people who get the treatment.
Dr. Oza says they have treated more than 1,000 patients and are on pace with doing 1,200 ablations this year.
He says a bigger deal is most insurance companies are covering this type of dual procedure.
Oza says that is leading to sicker and older patients opting to get the treatment.