This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Read more.
Professor Fu Siong Ng
Imperial College Healthcare Private Care - Cardiology
What additional treatment options are there for abnormal heart rhythms following an external cardioversion?
Professor Fu Siong Ng, Professor of cardiology, consultant cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist, explains treatment options after external cardioversion in this video, covering recurrence of abnormal rhythms, longer-term medication and when further procedures may be considered. This offers practical, patient-friendly guidance for those considering private care.
Transcript
If you have an external cardioversion and you maintain a normal rhythm in the long term, that is a great outcome.
However, in some individuals, despite initially successfully getting back to a normal rhythm, they relapse into that irregular heart rhythm.
At that stage, we would think about other options like something called catheter ablation, which is an invasive procedure where we stick a little catheter through the vein in the groin up to the heart, and we do something called ablation where we do controlled disruption of heart muscle around the area where the rhythm is being triggered to try to improve the chances that someone stays in a normal rhythm in the long term.