![]() ![]() When it got to the bit where they froze the heart tissue with liquid nitrogen in a balloon threaded through my artery, I was gripped by a sense of impending doom." "It wasn't painful but it definitely wasn't enjoyable. "Surgery took about 90 minutes and I was awake throughout," he recalls. "My heart went into atrial fibrillation several times after that, meaning I had to go through the cardioversion process repeatedly," he says.Ī year after his original infection, in 2021 Xand had to return to hospital for an ablation, a procedure that uses freezing liquid nitrogen to 'burn' heart tissue, creating scarring that disrupts the electrical signals that cause irregular heartbeats. With his heart beating more normally, Xand was prescribed bisoprolol, a type of beta-blocker - medication that alters the heart's response to nerve impulses, slowing its rate to reduce the risk of further heart-rhythm problems. ![]() "The emergency doctors shocked my heart to stop it temporarily, allowing it to restart in a normal rhythm, a process called cardioversion," he adds. Realising the seriousness of the situation he raced by taxi to University College Hospital in London. "I believed that my heart-rhythm problem arose most likely as a result of the virus inflaming my heart," he says. It can lead to stroke and, in extreme cases, heart failure. This was March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when little was known about the typical course of the infection.īut Xand's training as a public health doctor left him in little doubt that he had developed atrial fibrillation, a dangerous heart rhythm disorder where abnormal electrical impulses cause an irregular and often racing heartbeat. I felt bad: faint, sweaty, breathless, panicky," he says. "I woke at 3am with my heart rate rushing at 170 beats per minute and in a chaotic rhythm. #DMG CARDIOLOGY TV#TWO weeks after falling ill with Covid, TV doctor Xand van Tulleken thought he was on the mend, when he suddenly took a turn for the worse. ![]()
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