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Julie
My 27 year old daughter, athletic and healthy, was just diagnosed with inappropriate sinus tachycardia. The symptoms started about 2 mos ago after an ankle surgery which resulted from a sports injury. After 3 trips to the emergency room, she has seen an ep specialist who told her there is no treatment for this, only medication. She had no ep study to confirm this diagnosis, although her symptoms do match the profile. The medication (atenolol) is not working well at all, and causes her b/p to drop too low. She has managed to stay out of the hospital but that's about it. Her home is on the 3rd floor (no elevator) and has trouble getting up & down the steps, never mind carrying anything like groceries, etc. She is single, lives a thousand miles from us in a higher altitude, has no good support system available when she needs help. I have read a number of articles about ablation and statistics about the success when used for this condition.
Just read Dr. Rich's article on IST which did
give some credibility to what her dr said--just take the medication and hope it
gets better on its own some day. But her quality of life seems to be down the
tubes, and the dilemma is whether or not she needs to abandon her successful
career in this location and start over again somewhere closer to family, taking
a huge financial loss, not to mention how to deal with the mental anguish of
having to abandon an active lifestyle and become sedentary as a young single
person. When do symptoms warrant taking the risk of ablation? How bad would it
be to live with a pacemaker if needed after ablation? How do we find a dr who
will work with her more aggressively, either with medication experimentation or
ablation? Any suggestions???
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