Just had a bad episode with A-Fib. I got slight burns from the pads used to shock me back into ‘sinus’? beat. Three days in the hospital, team of maybe 6 people for the shock treatment. Small burns around the perimeter of the pads. I’m a big fan of electric shock.
Were you awake when they did that?
Glad you have recovered! You must have had really bad Atrial fibrillation to require shock treatment. Usually people can live with A-fib as the AV junction will filter the extra signals and keep your ventricular contractions to a “normal” rate.
A good friend of mine just underwent a similar procedure, except, she went under general anesthesia, then they stopped her heart, then shocked it back to life.
2 weeks, so far, no a-fib.
The doctor explained it was analogous to rebooting a computer! I’m sure @L.Lynn knows alllll about it.
My wife, an oncology nurse, had a problem while at lunch at work. One day at work, just after lunch, her heart beat increased to over 250 beats per minute. She was rushed to the emergency room where doctors and nurses fought for about 40 minutes to determine what was going on, and bring her heart back to normal. They called me, I worked about a mile away, and rushed over to the hospital. I’ve never seen that many people in a treatment room. The usual medications didn’t work so they resorted to the defibrillator. They didn’t want to risk anesthesia since she had just eaten so she was conscious and alert when they shocked her. I could tell by the look on her face she didn’t enjoy it. That knocked the heart back to normal on the first try. She also had burn marks from the paddles.
She was transferred next door to the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart Institute. The doctor there determined she had a second AV ode. They ran an electrode thing up through the femoral artery or vein, I cant recall which, and burned the second node. That solved the problem.
If you are going to have a problem like that it helps to have it in the center of the largest medical complex on the planet.
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Oh yes indeed…some caused by plain stupidity, as in my recent “encounter” on the E. I fitted a new uprated heater blower fan, per a suggestion from John W, not that that has anything to do with things…once mounted I decided to try it out before hooking it up to the car’s wiring, so I made up a couple of of wires and duly plugged then into the multi-connector for the fan. Grabbed each one and popped them onto the battery. Giant flash, loads of smoke and much pain from each of my fingers, left and right hands. Wires had melted and by the time I could let go (about 1.5 secs, maybe less) I had deep burns on my fingers…no blood, the wounds had been cauterized by the instant and excessive heat. What had I done wrong…well you’ve probably guessed…I “assumed” the multi connector was a set if individual contacts, it’s not ad I had inadvertently used a pair of common contacts and dead shorted them, and me, across the battery. Hurt like hell for a few days and couldn’t do any useful work for some period.
I’ve had my share of shocks from 220V…120V systems over the years but nothing has been anywhere near as painful as that shot from 12V and god knows how many amps!
Oh, and the new blower works great! Thanks JW!
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It’s called cardioversion. Paramedics can do it with the right equipment and training.
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Nope. They run the same stuff that killed Mike Jackson, I think. You can’t eat beforehand, and they need to check down your throat for clots in your upper atria (ultrasound). The regular heart ultrasound (echocardiagram) can’t “see” the upper atria.
Nowadays they actually implant a device to do that automatically if you ever need it. I’ll bet that’s a kick in the pants! Better than the alternative, though.
I think that’s called an ablation procedure.
Recently a nephew of mine passed away at age 7 of ARVC. His dad is a doctor, thought they had it under control, unfortunately it turned out he was wrong. Since ARVC is hereditary and they now know he got it from my brother, I’m going to have to be tested – even though I’m already 64 with no symptoms. If it proves to be an issue, two courses of action include ablation and implanting an automatic defibrillator.
Yes, I believe that’s correct.
Propofol…great stuff, when administered correctly.
There’s a reason the anesthesiologist is paid the big bucks.
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To cover malpractice insurance premiums. IIRC, anesthesiology and OB/GYN are the most sued medical specialties.
That’s correct: surgeons rarely kill the patient. Gas passers earn every damn dollar they get!
I was sitting at home when there was a flash of lightning from the microwave. On investigation, a mouse had shorted across the capacitor. There was only a bleached white skeleton left. My electrician friend told me the capacitor can hold very high voltage for a long time. I have never even opened up the back of a microwave since.
Bet that smelled… lovely.
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Instantly vaporized. No smell. I did get a new microwave.
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I disassembled my old micro, just to see how one is built, and made damned sure to work extremely carefully, following clear instructions on how to properly discharge the cap.
I also remembered the old man’s advice: ALWAYS discharge a cap with one hand behind your back.
I think that was heat, not electricity? The current a car battery can provide is like a welder, and things can get white hot very soon. You can get maybe 600 amps! A capacitor can beat that by a long shot, and be very dangerous if you short it out. Unlike a battery, caps have very low internal resistance, so you can get thousands of amps if you short them. The 1 Farad super caps used in sound systems are deadly if shorted.