Atrial Fibrillation

I have afib. Electro/cardio conversion works quite well for me, and I have had it about 2 1/2 years apart. Yes, I am also on appropriate meds. Can anyone please answer or find out if any of the local hospitals have the machine necessary to do just a procedure? It will make or break whether we ever return. Thanks so much for anyone who can answer this.

I think that there is a new cardiologist in Zihua. Ask at clinica especialdes

I assume all of the hospitals would have defibrillators that could do,a,cardio version. To,my knowledge there are no paramedics that could do this in the field. At one time there were defibrillators in some of their ambulances, but I remember reading that they weren’t functional because of failed batteries. I’m not sure if there are cardiologists in town. I remember reading about a visiting cardiologist, but it could be there are now some in town. Should things go sideways and you needed a cardiac cath, angiogram or angioplasty they can’t be done in Zihuatanejo.

There is a "retired" ex-CDMX cardiologist in town who still works out of Clinica Maciel. His name is Dr Daniel Luviano Delgado. He can be messaged on WhatsApp at +527555542380. You can communicate in simple English or in Spanish using an online translator. He is very knowledgeable and thorough. But I doubt he has local access to cardioversion.

Thanks for your attempts to be helpful. It is my understanding that what I need is not the same as a defibrillator Also, if I were in afib, I would not just need a cardiologist - I would need the doc and the machine.

What you need is synchronized cardioversion. Pretty much all defibrillators can do this. (AEDs can’t) Has your cardiologist talked about ablation and a pacemaker? It is an alternative for some. Although it is always best to have a cardiologist on board, a trained ER doc does these frequently. (FWIW, I’m a retired ER doc)

Timmac, you are a Zihuatanejo.net treasure!

Cardiology is so interesting. Consider Broken Heart
Syndrome. Or as the Japanese say 'takotsubo syndrome.' The emotional
Impact of the death of a loved one is so powerful the woman's heart takes on the shape
of an octopus (tako) trap (tsubo). True story.

My cardiologist says we are nowhere near ablation or a pacemaker, since my meds and one single zap have done the job twice (and yes, the 1st one was in the ER). If there are working defibrillators in Z and they can be used for a conversion, I'll see if he thinks it's OK to go when I see him in 3 weeks. Thanks for the medical input!

If possible it would be best to confirm with the hospitals the type of defibrillators they have. AEDs as far as I know will not do synchronized cardioversion. The units in the field are not currently functional as their battery packs are dead. Keep in mind if something goes sideways (extremely rare) their capacities are extremely limited. I can’t imagine that you would need an angioplasty after cardioversion, but of somehow you did, it could not be done there.

Cardiology is so interesting. Consider Broken Heart
Syndrome. Or as the Japanese say 'takotsubo syndrome.' The emotional
Impact of the death of a loved one is so powerful the woman's heart takes on the shape
of an octopus (tako) trap (tsubo). True story.

Well, that may have been the incident that led to the discovery of the syndrome, but my good wife experienced Takotsubo Syndrome at Kelowna General Hospital 18 or 20 years ago, and it wasn't brought on due to the loss of a loved one. She was having a full pre-surgery check-up prior to scheduled femoral bypass surgery, when one of the various doctors said he feared she was actually having a heart attack: her pulse rate was alarmingly high, she was perspiring, shortness of breath. He immediately gave her nitroglycerin and had her "admitted" to emergency. Turns out that one of the heart ventricles swells up, temporarily, to almost twice normal size. The diagnosis was Takotsubo Syndrome. Current thinking is that stress can bring it on, (loss of a loved one would obviously qualify.) In my wife's case, she found all hospital visits very stressful. Treatment was simply three months of "rest" and she was prescribed some heart medication that, I think, she continues to take to this day, although the cardiologist said, at the time, that he didn't really know if it would help or not. Her scheduled surgery (which was to 'clean out' an earlier aorto-bifemoral bypass) had to be cancelled, which, in the end, was the most unfortunate result of the Takotsubo Syndrome: during the three months of "rest", the original bypass became occluded, necessitating a subsequent femoro/femoral bypass.

You are right , it is not always loss of a loved one that
triggers Takotsubo. For the longest time medicine would not
even accept that emotions might lead to physiological changes.
Then came Walter Cannon, who upset geese and cats, if memory serves,
and showed that this emotional response promptly shut down the GI tract.
What we now know as the sympathetic nervous system.

i also have Afib and had abblation and a pacemaker there was no one in Zihuat that could diagnose the Pace they have defilibrators and ecg machines but none to diagnose Afib there used to be a cardiologist that came twice a week from Acapulco don t know if its improved but when in trouble with the heart Acapulco is a long way when you need attention in 15 minutes...