Rapid Heart-Rate

I have been experiancing a rather rapid heart-rate lately. My normal rate is usually anywhere between 60 and 75 bpm - anything over about 95 bpm makes me uncomfortable. I have been having bouts of a rapid heart-rate that seem to last from several minutes to an hour where my heart rate is over 120 bmp. I know that 120 bpm isn't all that fast, but for me it is extremely unusual.
When these rapid heart-rates occur, it causes chest pain and pressure, shortness of breath, and dizziness. It causes me to feel very fatigued, and it also makes me anxious...which I know doesn't help the situation. The strangest part about these episodes is that they happen when I am doing nothing at all. I could understand my heart-rate increasing with activity, but it always happens at rest.
The rate drop response on my pacer is turned on, so it does make my heart-rate increase by 10 bpm when it senses a significant drop. But, I can tell the difference between the pacer induced rapid heart-rate, and strange episodes that I am experiancing.
My doctor did mention at my last interrogation that I was having some tachycardic episodes, but she wasn't too alarmed because my rate wasn't getting dangerously high. I was taking Advair for asthma at the time, so she had me stop taking it, thinking that it may be causing these episodes. Well, for the first few days, it seemed to be better, but now I think it is much worse. Now, the episodes seem to be occuring more frequently and they are making me very symptomatic, which I had never had a problem with before.
I suffer from Neurocardiogenic Syncope, so I take my blood pressure when I start to feel bad. My blood pressure monitor has a heart rhythm detector built in, and it warns you whenever it detects an abnormal rhythm. Before this week, it had never detected an abnormal rhythm, but now when my I check my BP and pulse during these rapid heart-rate episodes, it always registers an abnormal rhythm.
Is this something that I should be alarmed about? Does anyone have any input or suggestions as to what may be going on?

Sorry for the length of this post!
Amanda

2 Comments

Sounds Like Me

by njmercer - 2008-02-10 10:02:34

Hi Amanda,

I can definitely relate to your symptoms. I, too, have the fast and irregular heartbeats at times and now I have a lot of extra heartbeats--which feel the worst. I have the blood pressure monitor that also detects the abnormal rhythms. Last Saturday I felt so awful that I ended up going to the hospital after checking my blood pressure three times within an hour--each time it indicated the abnormal rhythm--twice it indicated that my heart rate was only 35 (not sure how that's possible when the pacemaker is supposed to keep it above 50) and once it was 116 and I felt really lousy. Yet my cardiologist tells me that I CANNOT rely on the heart rhythm detector built into the blood pressure monitor when I have a pacemaker (he says it's not accurate, yet I KNOW what I'm feeling. When I got to the emergency room on Saturday and they hooked me up to the monitor, they said that I was having very irregular heartbeats. After taking blood and getting the Troponin levels, I was admitted to the ICU once again as the levels were high. No one can figure out why the Troponin levels keep coming back so high when they say I haven't had a heart attack. So I left the hospital with Rythmol to control the extra heartbeats but had to stop taking it after four days because of bad side effects. I see a specialist on Tuesday and hope he has some answers.

Judy

Also have rapid heart rate

by pacie - 2008-02-10 12:02:32

When I went for my last interrogation the tech nurse that does mine asked me if I had been feeling okay lately and I told her yes for the exception of sometimes feeling a little anxious and SOB. I told her that I shund away from anything being wrong because they don't last very long. She told me that my pacemaker had recorded several episodes of rapid HR and some of them being as high as 180 BPM. So they ordered some tests and they said it was Wolff Parkinsons White Syndrone. My EP couldn't understand why it was showing its ugly head at this time since I had already had an ablation. He said they were going to keep an eye on it and if it doesn't calm down that he was going to put me on some meds to try and control it but he said that sometimes the meds have an evil side of their own so I am really not wanting to take them. I mean, I have enough going on inside my body without taking something that makes things worse. Hope this helps.... Pacie

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