As an electrophysiologist, I treat the electric currents that keep your heart beating at regular intervals, and I’d like to share a few details on common conditions affecting the heart’s electrical system, and also tell you about some of the treatments available to fix these conditions.
First off, a healthy heart beats at approximately 60 to 100 beats per minute, and each beat is triggered by a small electrical impulse that prompts the heart muscles to contract, thereby pushing blood out of the heart chambers and through your arteries out into your body and to the organs where it is needed.
In some cases, these electrical impulses can be too fast or too slow, causing conditions that can potentially be very harmful or even fatal if not corrected. We can usually correct these fast heart rhythms with medicines or ablation procedures and the slow heart rhythms with devices like pacemakers.
Let’s look at a few of the most common conditions. The first is atrial fibrillation, a common arrhythmia that originates from the top chambers and causes a broad spectrum of symptoms. This condition can cause very fast and uncomfortable heart rhythms and it can be treated with medications or an invasive ablation procedure. Another issue with atrial fibrillation is that it does increase the risk of having a stroke.
Another common condition is called bradycardia ("slow heart rate"), and this can have several forms. Many of them can cause symptoms like weakness and loss of consciousness. These are usually treated with implantation of a pacemaker, which acts to speed up the heart rate.
There are other heart conditions that can actually increase the risk of people developing arrhythmias, one of which can be ventricular tachycardia, which is a fast and potentially dangerous rhythm from the bottom heart chambers. Patients with certain types of congestive heart failure are at risk of developing this problem. Sometimes if we detect these conditions we can actually implant a device that is designed to detect and then treat these rhythm disturbances. These devices are called defibrillators and are similar to pacemakers but serve this added purpose. In many cases, I like to think of them as a type of insurance policy, for people at increased risk of a lethal rhythm problem.
That’s a short lesson in electrophysiology, a medical specialty that encompasses evaluation and treatment of a broad array of both fast and slow arrhythmias. If you or a loved has an issue with your heart, keep in mind that getting the right medical information, diagnosis and treatment can have a profound impact both in protecting your life and enhancing the quality of your life.
Ralph M. DeBiasi, M.D., is an electrophysiologist on staff at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London.