Electophysiology Pre-Procedure Instruction Sheet

BEFORE THE PROCEDURE:

• The Cath Lab staff member will call you the day before with a time to check in.
• Report in 90 minutes prior to scheduled procedure time
• Nothing to eat or drink after midnight except medications
• You will spend about 1 hour in our holding room where you will have an IV started, labs drawn if needed and sign your consent.

MEDICATIONS:

• If you take Insulin and your doctor did not tell you what to take the morning of your procedure, then call your cardiologist to confirm dose.
• If you are on Coumadin and have not talked with your doctor about when to stop this medication, you need to call your cardiologist.
• If you take heart medications and are having an EP study or an ablation, your doctor should have talked with you about which medications to stop. If not, please call your cardiologist.
• You may take all other medications with a sip of water.

AFTER THE PROCEDURE:

• You cannot drive home, so please make arrangements for a ride home.

YOU WILL STAY OVERNIGHT:

• For a new device implant (pacemaker or ICD), a lead change or added to a device (biventricular pacemaker or ICD)
• An atrial fibrillation ablation or an unusually long ablation

YOU WILL GO HOME THE SAME DAY:

• For a battery change on a pacemaker or ICD
• Defibrillator threshold test
• Most Ablations
• EP studies without device implant

DELAYS:

We apologize if you wait a long time for your procedure. There are occasions when a procedure takes longer than expected or there is an emergency and that very sick patient needs to be done right away. We do all we can to provide the best care for you or your family during a procedure and we try and schedule patients according to usual procedure times. Unfortunately, unforeseen events or unusually difficult cases do occur.