Luckily I was sent to a hospital that specialized in this entire condition. From the looks of the cardiac center, they do a dozen various procedures a day such as mine.
It was at least reassuring to know that the doctors literally do these procedures everyday.
Sorry to hear that your VT ablation was unsuccessful and that an ICD had to be implanted. VT ablations can be difficult and really should be done at centers that have an EP or a group that specialize in VT mapping and ablation. Now that you have an ICD, you have time to look around for centers that have the expertize in the event that you need to have that done.
Not that anyone's following my condition but here's the end result of my VT episode from January.
Doctor found a very small scar in the heart after reading my MRI. After much discussion it was decided that he'd do a EP study on my heart to see if the Sotalol medication was controlling my VT condition. If it was, he hoped to just keep me on medication for control of VT.
During the EP study it was determined that the medication wasn't stopping him from putting my heart into VT unfortunately. The next plan (during this same procedure) was to try and ablat the bad cells causing the condition. This also didn't work because of a couple of factors including being able to reach them.
Unfortunately the only real recourse was to have a single line ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) implanted which was done the following day. Not the happiest of endings but at least it should take care of the problem if it ever returns. And yes, my left clavicle/chest area is VERY sore from the surgery, not looking forward to the replacement surgery in 8 years or so.
What happened with your cardiac MRI?
I went into cardiac arrest during a run ended up in the ER to have my heart stopped too. Afterward all my tests including a cardiac MRI came back showing no scarring and a healthy heart. I had an EP study done on FEB 4th where they found scarring that did not show up in the MRI in my right ventricle and I also had a defibrillator placed in for VT in my left ventricle. In my case the VT was high at 260bpm and they determined I was at high risk for sudden cardiac death. I am also on Sotalol.
Best wishes
That must have been scary. Please share the MRI interpretation when you have it. Only guesses at this point as to what caused the VT without the MRI. If there is nothing obvious from the MRI, then I think the next step will probably involve some continuous monitoring using something like the LINQ temporary implant. Best wishes for getting a handle on this.