I say Dr. Steinberg about 5 years ago. He is very well regarded. There are about six EP's in the practice he leads. There are several locations. I use the one at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ. After my AFIB got worse and I had a stroke, I saw another EP in his practice, Dr. Arshad. who performed a cryo balloon PV ablation on me, she was wonderful. The practice web site is at http://www.arrhythmia.org/.

My impression (and I forgot which Dr. told me this) the FIRM procedure is used for more advanced cases. A cryo or RF ablation is usually the first procedure attempted. I could be wrong about this.

Read this:

http://www.lvhn.org/for_referring_physicians/better_medicine/heart_and_vascular/new_ablation_techniques_improve_long_standing_atrial_fibrillation

Annie on this site had one. Seemed to be doing fine a year later.

Petey,
Love that little phrase near the end of the article - "The traditional belief is that once a patient has had AF for more than a year or two, ablation techniques are not going to be highly effective. WHAT? I think this is what always made me crazy in doing research...I am sure that was a throw off line, or maybe just put in to emphasize the follow up that with FIRM, this is no longer the case. But who was putting this out? I of course found one or two articles where they said that ablation should be the front line treatment, and I have read on this site as well that those with paroxysmal afib should consider this earlier rather than later. Even if true, I certainly hope for all of our sakes that the breakthroughs coming will help those with afib in ANY and ALL stages. So many options...how does one choose?

Bill

Bill: I think the statement means that longstanding persistent ablation was less effective (maybe about 10-15% less effective than paroxysmal first ablation) and had a higher recurrence rate, requiring multiple ablations, until the new techniques came out. Not mentioned was that the more experienced EPs to much better. petey

Rob: Let me clarify, when I saw Dr. Steinberg 5 years ago, he said I needed an ablation. I didn't want one then. After 5 years had passed, my afib got much worse, and I had a stroke. I guess I should have had the ablation when he said I needed it.