Ventricular Arrhythmia

Ventricular Arrhythmia – General Information

The arrhythmias are abnormal heart rhythms, which lead the heart to pump the blood less effective. The majority of the cases of arrhythmias are benign and usually temporary and manifest through an extra beat or a beat in minus. These extra beats or the skipped beats are due to physical exercise or very strong emotions. There are also arrhythmias which are life-threatening and which need serious treatment. The arrhythmias are divided in two categories: Ventricular Arrhythmia and the supra - ventricular form of arrhythmia. The last one usually appears in the atrium, while the first one occurs in the ventricles. These two types of arrhythmias can be defined by the speed of the heart beats in: very slow (these are also known as bradycardia and the heart rate is less than 60 beat a minute), very fast (these are also known as tachycardia and the heart beats are over 100 beats a minute) and fast uncoordinated (these are called fibrillation and it manifests as individual heart muscle fibers contractions).
The supra - ventricular one is in fact an atrial fibrillation. In the atrial fibrillation the heart beats vary from 400 to 600 beats per minute and as a consequence the ventricles beats are irregularly and have a rate which varies between 170 and 200 beats per minute. Unfortunately, once the atrial fibrillation appears it lasts a lifetime. The Ventricular Arrhythmia also called tachycardia is one of the most serious arrhythmias and the heart beats is of 100 or over 100 beats per minute. This medical condition is a very dangerous medical condition because it may lead to ventricular fibrillation (meaning a disorganized electrical activity of the heart).

Ventricular Arrhythmia – Symptoms

It is well known the fact that any medical disorder (including Ventricular Arrhythmia) can trigger a variety of symptoms. Therefore, some of this medical condition's most uncommon symptoms have not been listed (mentioned) here. This is why we strongly recommend you to contact your personal health care provider whenever you develop any unusual, bothersome or unpleasant symptoms. Your personal physician will be able to tell you if you are suffering from this medical condition or from any other medical disorder. Here is a list of the most common symptoms that a person who suffers from Ventricular Arrhythmia, may experience, although each individual experiences them in a different way: rapid beats in the chest (which are also known as palpitations) which usually are accompanied by chest pain and shortness of breath, the patients may feel tired, dizzy and light-headed and they can loose their consciousness (which is also known as syncope or near syncope and appears as a result of the drop in the blood stream pressure). The patients may feel the heartbeats as a strong pulse in the neck or as a racing beat in the chest and may experience weakness and sweat. Other symptoms include anxiety as a result of the fast heart beat, pale color, nausea, cold sweat. These symptoms are caused by any arrhythmias of the heart from the mild form to the severe forms and the more serious are the arrhythmias the more severe are the symptoms which the patient experiences, but we must take into consideration that there are also persons who are asymptomatic.

Ventricular Arrhythmia – Treatment

In order to establish the diagnostic of Ventricular Arrhythmia, the doctor or personal health care provider will examine the patient’s heart, lungs and also the medical history. The doctor may also recommend the patients to do a couple of blood tests in order to see if there exists an underlying condition which may lead to the Ventricular Arrhythmia such as a thyroid medical condition. The patients will also need to do a chest x-ray and an electrocardiogram (also abbreviated ECG, it is a test which measures the electrical activity of the patient’s heart). In order to prevent the appearance and development of Ventricular Arrhythmia and in general all sorts of heart disease it is very important for the patients to maintain a healthy weight and to have a healthy diet. People should also try to do regular exercises and try not to smoke or if smokers to try to quit smoking and to go to a medical consult regularly especially if they are after the age of 40.

The principal goal of the treatment of the patients who are suffering from Ventricular Arrhythmia is to restore the normal heart beats, to slow down the heart beats and to prevent the formation of the blood clots. The treatment options of this medical condition include: medications, surgery, non-surgical procedure (such as atrial fibrillation ablation) and medical devices (the doctor may implant a pacemaker also known as defibrillator). The treatment of the Ventricular Arrhythmia is based on the symptoms that the patients suffering from this medical condition experience, the frequency of the arrhythmia episodes and on whether the patient has an underlying condition which leads to this medical condition or not.

The doctor may recommend to the patients to use a single medication or a combination of medications which will help to slow the heart rate. The bad part is that in some persons who are suffering from this medical condition these medications which are supposed to help them, make the heart beats worse. Such drugs are called arrhythmic medications and may include: digoxin (these drugs help to control the heart rate), calcium channel blockers or beta-blockers (these drugs control the heart rate during activity and rest). The drugs which help in the prevention of the blood clots formation include anticoagulants (also known as blood-thinning drugs such as Warfarin, Aspirin, etc).

The surgical procedure is called Maze procedure and helps to reestablish the normal heart beats, but it is only used in the patients who have tried all the other treatment options and were unresponsive to them. The non-surgical procedures are used in the cases when the patients with Ventricular Arrhythmia were unresponsive to the medication treatment and include cardio-version (this uses electrical shocks in order to reestablish the normal heart pulse), radiofrequency catheter ablation (this technique uses electrical pathways in order to restore the normal pulse of the hear) and implantable defibrillator (this device is implanted in the person’s chest and it detects and stops the dangerous arrhythmias).