After cardiac ablation, it may take some time to return to exercise. You should begin slowly and increase activity levels as you heal.
Dependent upon the nature of your arrhythmia, cardiac ablation might be required as part of treatment. This procedure uses surgery to destroy malfunctioning cells in your heart and stop abnormal impulses from creating problems.
Rest for a Week
Before agreeing to cardiac ablation, patients should fully comprehend its risks. An experienced cardiologist should help ensure this decision can be made confidently.
Once released from hospital, patients will likely be advised to rest for a week following an ablation procedure. This could involve taking time off work – particularly physically-demanding jobs – and gradually increasing exercise amounts if they weren’t active prior to having undergone ablation.
Cardiac ablation is used to treat atrial flutter (AF) and atrial fibrillation (Af), two forms of arrhythmia that cause irregular and too fast heartbeats. Your health care provider inserts a catheter through one of your blood vessels – often located in your groin), shoulder, or neck; equipped with sensors capable of measuring heart’s electricity and helping them identify which areas cause abnormal rhythm and determine where an ablation should occur.
Once their procedure is over, patients typically wake up in a recovery area where they’ll have a compression clamp on their groin and an indwelling urinary catheter which must remain in place for 4-6 hours – before being transferred to their normal hospital ward.
One week post-ablation, many patients report feeling fatigued despite having healthy hearts. This is a normal reaction to this surgery; with time and rest your energy will return to its previous levels.
At this stage, most individuals should refrain from heavy lifting and strenuous exercise until they receive clearance from their physician to resume these activities. They might want to wear a Polar watch that records heartbeat so they can monitor how effectively their healing is progressing.
After having undergone cardiac ablation, it’s vital that individuals follow their doctor’s instructions precisely in order to give themselves the best chance of returning to normal activities without experiencing complications. While it might be tempting to try and rush back into old routines too quickly, it’s always better to be safe than sorry and it could take three months or more for all ablated tissue to heal fully.
Avoid Heavy Lifting
An electrophysiologist (EP) performs cardiac ablation by extracting catheters from your body and using either pressure or collagen patches to stop bleeding at their insertion sites. You’ll then be hooked up to a telemetry monitor that uses EKG-style patches and displays your heart rhythm; so you should lie flat for several hours during this safe procedure, once commonly conducted over night in hospitals but now often performed same-day in many centers during COVID-19 pandemic; for many it has become day surgery!
Ablation may help lower the risk of arrhythmia and stroke by decreasing blood clot formation in the brain or heart, and helping you quit smoking. When medication doesn’t control AFib effectively or if medical conditions increase your stroke risk, doctors may advise ablation as an additional measure to keep you safe.
Ablation treatments require time for their work to manifest into scar tissue that can stabilize your heartbeat, so even your doctor might not know whether they were successful until a few months have passed. If symptoms and test results indicate success, however, your physician will likely let you discontinue the medications prescribed during ablation therapy.
If you can resume regular exercise following ablation, it’s essential that heavy lifting be avoided for at least a week in order to allow time for its effects to take hold. When engaging in physical activity again it’s also wise to discuss with your doctor how much activity might be safe and when it should occur.
Even once you’re cleared to resume exercise, be aware that your heart might still struggle with arrhythmias. If sudden arrhythmias start occurring while exercising, don’t panic: it could just be that the procedure hasn’t taken effect and needs repeating; otherwise it may need cardioversion – a surgical procedure using electrical shocks to reset your heart rhythm.
Start Slowly
Cardiac ablation is a minimally invasive procedure designed to restore normal heartbeats by disrupting electrical signals that trigger arrhythmias. Your doctor can perform ablation for various conditions, including atrial fibrillation (AF), ventricular tachycardia (VT), and atrioventricular nodal reentry tachycardia (VNAR).
Under cardiac ablation, your doctor creates an electrical map of your heart by placing electrodes on its surface and inserting a catheter inside to navigate within. This map helps your doctor find and destroy damaged tissues that cause arrhythmia to persist – this should eliminate it and any future episodes from returning.
Your daily activities should resume within a day or two following surgery, though you should approach exercise slowly in order to avoid complications or reinflaming scar tissue. In general, aim for exercising at between 60%-75% of maximum heart rate; also utilize a heart rate monitor as an aid in tracking progress.
After having undergone an ablation procedure, you may still feel some discomfort in the days and weeks following surgery. This may be caused by water retention due to injection of saline solution during and after your procedure; drinking plenty of water may help alleviate this side effect.
Your cardiologist may prescribe blood-thinning medications such as aspirin or warfarin to help reduce the chance of blood clots forming while your scar tissue heals, so make sure you continue taking these as directed until instructed otherwise by your healthcare provider.
Cardiac ablation is most often performed to treat atrial fibrillation (AF), which occurs when your upper chambers, known as the atria, quiver instead of contracting to pump blood outward. AF increases your risk for blood clots to break away and travel through your bloodstream to your brain and cause stroke.
Most patients who undergo ablation for atrial fibrillation experience a significant improvement in quality of life after surgery. You may not know immediately whether your ablation has worked, but three months post surgery it should have completely eliminated any arrhythmias that were present before.
Avoid High-Intensity Exercise
Cardiac ablation is an effective treatment for abnormal heart rhythms that uses heat to destroy malfunctioning muscle cells that generate extra electrical impulses. According to Mayo Clinic research, doctors may employ open-heart surgery or catheter procedures for cardiac ablation; catheter procedures tend to be much less invasive and have shorter recovery times.
After receiving cardiac ablation, it’s advisable to refrain from high-intensity exercises for several weeks afterward. High intensity workouts cause your heart to work harder and increase the risk of blood clots and other complications.
After a week or so of gradual exercise increases, you should gradually feel more energetic. But be sure to follow the advice of your cardiologist regarding the best ways to return to a fitness level similar to before. Always include a 10 minute warm-up period before beginning exercise at 60-75% of maximum heart rate for most sessions; cool down and stretching exercises may also be useful; using a heart rate monitor is another useful way of monitoring heart rates during physical activity.
If you’re struggling to maintain your regular activities, consult with a cardiac rehabilitation specialist. These professionals specialize in working with individuals recovering from heart surgery or events related to cardiovascular health and can advise on the most beneficial ways for starting exercise, what vital signs to watch out for and how best to gradually return back to previous levels of activity.
Dependent upon the type of cardiac ablation procedure you undergo, recovery could occur quickly. With surgical ablation procedures, however, an overnight hospital stay might be required before doctors remove catheter and sheath from your body and perform follow-up examinations to remove catheter/sheath placement and removal. At times there may be minor bruises/bleeding at the site of procedure which usually resolve within 7-10 days without any intervention from you or doctors.
As long as you do not have a history of traumatic injury, non-contact sports such as swimming, indoor cycling and walking may be beneficial to you. But contact sports such as wrestling, boxing and football increase the risk of serious injury significantly and should also be avoided as should activities that require you to jump or fall.
