Improving Heart Arrhythmias

 

 

Treatment

If you have an arrhythmia, treatment may or may not be necessary. Usually, it’s required only if the arrhythmia is causing significant symptoms or if it’s putting you at risk of a more serious arrhythmia or arrhythmia complication.

Treating slow heartbeats

If slow heartbeats (bradycardias) don’t have a cause that can be corrected, doctors often treat them with a pacemaker because there aren’t any medications that can reliably speed up your heart.

A pacemaker is a small device that’s usually implanted near your collarbone. One or more electrode-tipped wires run from the pacemaker through your blood vessels to your inner heart. If your heart rate is too slow or if it stops, the pacemaker sends out electrical impulses that stimulate your heart to beat at a steady rate.

Treating fast heartbeats

For fast heartbeats (tachycardias), treatments may include one or more of the following:

• Vagal maneuvers. You may be able to stop an arrhythmia that begins above the lower half of your heart (supraventricular tachycardia) by using particular maneuvers that include holding your breath and straining, dunking your face in ice water, or coughing.These maneuvers affect the nervous system that controls your heartbeat (vagus nerves), often causing your heart rate to slow. However, vagal maneuvers don’t work for all types of arrhythmias.
• Medications For many types of tachycardia, you may be prescribed medication to control your heart rate or restore a normal heart rhythm. It’s very important to take any anti-arrhythmic medication exactly as directed by your doctor in order to minimize complications.If you have atrial fibrillation, your doctor may prescribe blood-thinning medications to help keep dangerous blood clots from forming.
• Cardioversion. If you have a certain type of arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation, your doctor may use cardioversion, which can be conducted as a procedure or by using medications.In the procedure, a shock is delivered to your heart through paddles or patches on your chest. The current affects the electrical impulses in your heart and can restore a normal rhythm.
• Catheter ablation. In this procedure, your doctor threads one or more catheters through your blood vessels to your heart. Electrodes at the catheter tips can use heat, extreme cold or radiofrequency energy to damage (ablate) a small spot of heart tissue and create an electrical block along the pathway that’s causing your arrhythmia.

MayoClinic.org

 

The best places to find your pulse are the:

• wrists
• inside of your elbow
• side of your neck
• top of the foot

American Heart association

 

Causes and Types of of Arrhythmia

You could have an arrhythmia even if your heart is healthy. Or it could happen because you have:

• Heart disease
• The wrong balance of electrolytes (such as sodium or potassium) in your blood
• Changes in your heart muscle
• Injury from a heart attack
• Healing process after heart surgery

The many types of arrhythmias include:

Premature ventricular contractions (PVCs)

Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial flutter.

Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT)

AV nodal reentrant tachycardia.

Ventricular tachycardia (V-tach).

Ventricular fibrillation.

Long QT syndrome.

Bradyarrhythmias.

Sinus node dysfunction

Heart block.

WebMD: When Your Heart Rhythm Isn’t Normal

 

Treating Arrhythmias

What Is Electrical Cardioversion?

If drugs can’t control a persistent irregular heart rhythm (such as atrial fibrillation), you might need cardioversion. For this, doctors, give you a short-acting anesthesia, then deliver an electrical shock to your chest wall to allow the normal rhythm to restart.

What Is a Pacemaker?

This device sends small electrical impulses to the heart muscle to keep a safe heart rate. The pacemaker has a pulse generator (which houses the battery and a tiny computer) and wires that send impulses from the pulse generator to the heart muscle.

What Is an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD)?

Doctors mainly use ICDs to treat ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation, two life-threatening heart rhythms.

The ICD constantly tracks the heart rhythm. When it detects a very fast, abnormal heart rhythm, it delivers an electric shock to the heart muscle to cause the heart to beat in a normal rhythm again. There are several ways the ICD can be used to restore normal heart rhythm. They include:

• Anti-tachycardia pacing (ATP). When the heart beats too fast, you get a series of small electrical impulses to the heart muscle to restore a normal heart rate and rhythm.
• Cardioversion. You may get a low-energy shock at the same time as the heart beats to restore normal heart rhythm.
• Defibrillation. When the heart is beating dangerously fast or irregularly, the heart muscle gets a higher-energy shock to restore a normal rhythm.
• Anti-bradycardia pacing. Many ICDs provide back-up pacing to maintain heart rhythm if it slows too much.

What Is Catheter Ablation?

You can think of this procedure as rewiring to fix an electrical problem within the heart.

The doctor will insert a catheter through the leg. The catheter delivers high-frequency electrical energy to a small area inside the heart that causes the abnormal heart rhythm. This energy “disconnects” the pathway of the abnormal rhythm.

Doctors use ablation to treat most PSVTs, atrial flutter, atrial fibrillation, and some atrial and ventricular tachycardias. Some people also need other procedures.

Heart Surgery for Arrhythmias

The Maze procedure is a type of surgery used to correct atrial fibrillation. During this procedure, the surgeon makes a series, or “maze,” of cuts in the heart’s upper chambers. The goal is to keep the heart’s electrical impulses only on certain pathways. Some people may need a pacemaker afterward.

A number of natural agents have been shown to prevent the occurrence of arrhythmias while supporting normal heart rhythm and improving cardiac function

Berberine

Berberine is the principal active ingredient in the herb goldenseal (Hydrastis Canadensis). Studies show that the alkaloid berberine is beneficial for ventricular arrhythmias due to lack of oxygen. Evidence also suggests that berberine administration can help prevent the onset of re-entrant ventricular tachyarrhythmias and sudden coronary death after myocardial ischemic damage.

Coenzyme Q10 

CoQ10 is highly concentrated in heart muscle cells due to the high-energy requirements of these cell types. Myocardial biopsies of patients with various cardiac diseases showed a CoQl0 deficiency in up to 75% of cases!9

Research has shown that orally administered CoQl0 can improve functioning of myocardial tissue, strengthening the heart’s contractions and making it beat more strongly (positive inotropic effect) and more regularly (anti-arrhythmia effect). CoQ10 also acts as an antioxidant to control free radicals produced during cardiac interventions (including angioplasty, thrombolysis, and surgery).

Taurine 

Taurine is the most abundant free amino acid in the heart, surpassing the combined quantity of all other aminos. It modulates the activity of cAMP and affects enzymes in heart muscle that contribute to contractility. Taurine also plays a role in the metabolism of calcium and may affect entry of calcium into heart muscle cells where it is essential in the generation and transmission of nerve impulses.12 Research shows that taurine prevents arrhythmogenesis by limiting cardiac hypertrophy and calcium overload of the myocardium.13