I had cardio ablation to resolve a SVT problem. It was very interesting experience. Laying on a table surrounded by computer monitors your put half out but aware. They insert through a vein in your upper thigh then wind their way to the inside of you heart. It is a little uncomfotable but not painful. On mine they spent some time mapping out the heart to find the place to burn. They induced the SVT (minor) to confirm the spot then burned it. After the burn they injected large dose of adrenalin to stimulate the heart and trigger any episode to prove the burn was good. That was the hardest part. Strapped down flooded with adrenalin sweating, heart racing and creating sensations like your running a hard mile. Once they are satisfied burn works they bring you down remove the probes and close the small incision. Several times during the procedure the affects to the drugs started wearing off and I would notify the nurse per instruction that I was starting to give a shit about what was going on and she would juice me a little more.
Post op was mostly concerned with the incision not bleeding or infecting and no exercise to let the heart recover. After a couple weeks can return slowly to normal exercise routines . ( I road bike so was eager to get back on the bike)
Mechanically things were good, The head in another story. It is easy to mind lock on the heart for every bobble and trigger anxiety. Took me a while to get my head strait about what happened and where my body was now at.
The SVT has never recurred but I do have increased occurrences of irregular beats ( pre beats sometimes called) These as you probably know even if not life threatening are troubling when they increase in frequency. I regular see my cardioologist and had had a harness on a couple of times with the prebeats so still under observation for those. Had to concede to a beta blocker which really slows down the cycling in the hills but being alive is a good thing...
All in all it was a strange experience with more dimensions than I originally contemplated but stoping the heart from randomly racing off to over 220 bpm for no reason was worth it.
hope this helps
Yes, I had a heart cath done once and it is very similar except they were looking for clogged veins, they didn’t find any. You are right that you know what is going on but just don’t care:). Hardest part was lying there afterwards with a sand bag on my leg for 6 hours to let the leg artery clot up before I could move around.
Your experience was different than mine. I wanted to watch, but they put me under.
I have some friends who are competitive cyclists (masters age categories, and high level) who have had the ablation treatment for afib and tachycardia. One of the had the cryo-ablation instead of the microwave ablation. It was part of the US clinical trials, since the procedure at the time was approved in Europe but not in the US. Cryo-ablation is supposed to leave less “collateral damage” than hitting the area with a high frequency RF current.