Bradyarrhythmia

Bradyarrhythmia General Information

Bradyarrhythmia Symptoms

Usually, Bradyarrhythmia is asymptomatic or has very few unnoticeable manifestations if the rate of the heart drops below 50 beats per minute.  Bradyarrhythmia seldom leads to other more noticeable symptoms, such as: a lack of energy (a mild fatigue), dizziness, accompanied by lightheadedness, fainting spells or syncope, or weakness. There can also appear shortness of breath, palpitations (sensations of your heart fluttering), pain felt in the chest or hypotension (a low pressure of the blood). The patient may be limited on how much could he or she physically exert. Other symptoms may be non-specific or very vague. Because this heart disorder can be also caused by other medical conditions that have no relations with the heart (typhoid fever, serious diseases of the liver, or hypothermia), a patient could experience some additional symptoms, but that can characterize only bradycardia, being specific for it. As example, we can precise the serious hypothyroidism that causes bradycardia and produces weight gain, although the appetite is poor, abnormal sensitivity to cold weather, constipation, a skin that is extremely dry, muscle cramps, a thin dry hair, and some other manifestations caused by a low level of hormones made by the thyroid. The symptoms of bradycardia may be responses (adverse effects) to certain drugs: metoprolol, propranolol, diltiazem, sotalol, atenolol, or verapamil. If bradycardia has a more grave stage, for example, when the heart is completely blocked, a patient could get convulsions, sudden loss of consciousness or may experience a sudden cardiac death (arrest). This one, for example, is medical emergency.

Bradyarrhythmia Treatment

If you think you may have problems with your heart, if you feel it abnormal, call immediately your health care provider to establish an approach date for a medical consultation. If you present any of the symptoms listed above and if your pulse rate is somewhere under 60 beats per minute, it is very important to seek medical advice to find exactly if you suffer of Bradyarrhythmia. Firstly, the doctor will ask you about your medical history, the drugs you took recently and about the symptoms you had lately. Only after this, he or she will perform a physical examination, including listening to your heart with a stethoscope. Additional tests to a precise diagnose for Bradyarrhythmia might be: electrocardiograms (EKG, or ECG) that measure the electrical currents that pass through the muscle of the heart, coronary angiography (when the doctor injects you into the arteries a dye and after takes X-rays that will detect the presence of abnormalities of the coronary arteries of the heart), Holt monitor (a portable monitor that you must wear daily, as you perform your usual actions), echocardiogram, tests for exercise stress (will record the manifestations of the heart while you perform increased physical activities). Depending on the results of these exams, the patient may need do dome other more in order to establish the right diagnose of Bradyarrhythmia, such as blood tests that will help detecting abnormal levels of glucose, drug, electrolytes, or thyroid function that can be clues for Bradyarrhythmia (for example, the tests may reveal unusual levels of TSH, a hormone of the pituitary gland that controls the thyroid and thyroid hormones). The blood tests may be useful to detect some enzymes of your liver and the cholesterol that are specific for those people with Bradyarrhythmia.

Usually, if this disease is detected and the patient does not present any kind of symptom, as in the case of a trained athlete, he or she will not receive a drug treatment. For symptomatic patients, IV Atropine is a medicine used to improve at least for the moment the symptoms. The right dosage of Atropine is ET q3-4min up to 4 mg total (0.05 mg/kg) or 0.6-1 mg IV. Sometimes, the solution for the patients may be an implanted device generating electrical impulses to make the heart beat normal, which is called a permanent peacemaker. If this heart disorder is caused by hypothyroidism, the ill person will receive a therapy with replacement dosages of thyroid hormones. The synthetic forms of these hormones are: liotrix, levothyroxine, and liothyronine, along with thyroid extracts. Usually, the prognosis is good for those suffering of this heart disease, especially if the cause is hypothyroidism. In some patients much older, their heart may strain so this must be prevented by increasing slowly the doses of hormones over a couple of weeks. But now, the permanent peacemakers reduce the risk of death and the prognosis improved in the last few years. This disease can be prevented, but only when it occurs as an adverse effect of certain medicines, by reducing the dosage or by changing the respective drug.