Depending on how severe your symptoms are, you doctor may recommend medications, surgery, or even a pacemaker to get and keep your heart in a normal rhythm.

Medication: Continue Reading BelowYour doctor can give you drugs that will:

Slow your heart rate and ease the strength of contractions (beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers)

Bring your heart's rhythm back to normal (sodium and potassium channel blockers)

Prevent blood clots ("blood thinners," or anticoagulants and antiplatelets)

Medical procedures: If medications don’t work, your doctor will probably try one of these to reset your heart’s rhythm.

Electrical cardioversion: She’ll stick special pads to your chest to send an electric shock to your heart. You won't feel it because you'll be asleep under general anesthesia.

Ablation: She'll make a cut in one of your blood vessels and run a small tube through it and into your heart. Then she’ll use a laser, radio waves, or extreme cold to burn off the tissue on the surface of your heart that's causing the problem. This creates scar tissue that doesn't pass the off-beat signals.

Maze procedure: If you're having open heart surgery for another reason, your doctor might do this. It’s similar to ablation.

Mini maze: This is also similar to ablation, but the doctor will make three or four small cuts in your side and put tubes, surgical tools, and a tiny camera into them.

Convergent procedure: This pairs catheter ablation with a mini maze. One doctor uses radiofrequency ablation in the pulmonary vein, and a surgeon makes a small cut under your breastbone to use radiofrequency energy on the outside of your heart.