Any forum cardiologists? Afib for a friend

[chopper]

A good buddy is having afib issues. They did the human "reboot" on him a few weeks ago and his heartbeat went back to normal. Friday it was back thru redline again.

Is there any on-line data about where in So Cal it is best/most successful to have this treated?

Here's the cut list of what they did last time.

[Buzz]

Probably best to check online at a few medical rating sites. The problem w/ specialists like that, is one person's wonderful experience can be the person's worst nightmare. The doc can have an emergency right before your appointment, which can delay your appt, and/or leave the otherwise awesome doc in a cranky mood. Podiatrists and dermatologists usually aren't under the same stress and strains that a cardiologist faces on a daily basis.
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[chopper]

Buzz wrote:
Probably best to check online at a few medical rating sites. The problem w/ specialists like that, is one person's wonderful experience can be the person's worst nightmare. The doc can have an emergency right before your appointment, which can delay your appt, and/or leave the otherwise awesome doc in a cranky mood. Podiatrists and dermatologists usually aren't under the same stress and strains that a cardiologist faces on a daily basis.
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We're lost in the medical wilderness here. Can you tell me where to look on-line medical rating sites?

[S. Pupp]

US News and World Report
Vitals.com
Healthgrades.com

Do NOT go to “Top Doctors” or “Leading Physicians of the World” or directories that sound similar to those. Those are not merit based, despite their titles.

[dk62]

You said they did a "reboot" (i.e., electroconversion), but according to the list you included it seems they actually did a full ablation. The difference being that the reboot just stops the current episode and the ablation is supposed to prevent future ones as well.

Unfortunately, it works in 50%-75% of the cases, depending on what the history was. Repeat procedure may raise that to 90%-95%. So, the fact that he has it coming back does not mean that the initial team did a bad job. In addition, the first few weeks after ablation you can have all sorts of arrhythmias - I had them for about 5 weeks before they stopped. BTW, 3 years ago I went to a top person at one of the 5 top University medical centers in the US, and I still get some Afib from time to time, just much milder and of much shorter duration than before (less than 30 min). I believe I may also need to have another one in the future.

I summary, if I were your friend, I would not necessarily look for another provider, unless they had other issues with this one.

[$tevie]

I have a friend who had to have an ablation three times. Sometimes it just doesn't take, which is my non-medical description of the problem.