going to try Dolfetilide (anti arrythmic)

[cynthia]

tomorrow am. I am being admitted to see how react to Dolfetilide (sp??). I had 3 afib episodes in the past 2 weeks... :cry: Lousy thing to have during vacationing in Hawaii but somehow I managed to do things. I hope they find something that helps.

[Cynaburst]

I think that Sarah has taken that drug before. She will probably chime in and let you know more about it.

[Sarah]

Yup. I was the second or third person the Mayo prescribed dofetilide to (they could never decide which it was, but leaning to third). This was back in fall 2000. I had very, very, very stubborn afib and it worked great.

However, dofetilide interacts with a LOT of medication including some antibiotics so you must NEVER EVER take anything without checking it agains the list they give you.

Before dofetilide, I had sometimes been casual about the timing between my doses of various meds, but I found that I needed to keep my doses on time so I kept my meds in pill boxes (the time of day/day of the week kind) and logged in a little notebook that I took it (beta-blocker reduced memory!).

When I traveled, I kept my doses on home time as much as possible.

Timing is important in general, but for me it was very important b/c they way they determine if you can stay on the medication is by measuring your QT interval. If it goes above 500ms, they stop the dofetilide. I went to 503 and they backed me down to 1/2 the full dose. The next morning, they said, you know, your afib is so stubborn that you won't convert on 1/2 a dose so we are going to try again. My QT went up to 497 on a full dose the next time around so I got to stay on it.

Even so, before I started logging my doses and had my system down, I took 2 pills within 1/2 hour of each other. I went to the ER and they wired me to a defibrillator and laid a syringe of magnesium next to my bed and then just watched me. My heart rate went down to 40ish at one point, but I didn't have to be defibrillated or anything. Once I knew I'd made it through the peak plasma point (8 hours post dose), I relaxed but they kept me overnight, just to be safe.

Good luck! The medication is potent, so I'm sure it will do the trick for you.

Keep us posted!

S