Arrythmias

Good day!  Thank you for taking my question.  48 year old female with no health problems - except......

Can you tell me how many times a day that a *normal" person would get PVC's.  I have heard that everyone gets  around 50 - 100.  Do you think that would be a sort of accurate number?  I have scoured the internet over and over and it always says "occasional or rare" PVC's are normal.  I just can't seem to find out what occasional means?  Does that mean 1 a day or does that mean 1 a minute or one a month or what?  Can you clarify?

I have been thru an EP study, thallium test, numerous holters, stress test and they cannot find one darn thing wrong with my heart.  They caught salvos and PVC's and PAC's and said no big deal.   I do these thump skippy thing or my heart just STOPS probably around 20 times a day (I don't know how some of these people can tolerate thousands of them!).  I also get this fast heartbeat every so often for no reason and it worries me.  I can just be sitting at my desk or watching TV and all or a sudden it is like a switch in my heart goes off and it starts going really fast for around 10 seconds or so then goes back to normal.  Freaks me out though!  The docs aren't too concered about it though since all my tests have come back negative?

Sometimes I will get 10 PVC's in a minute for 1/2 and hour or so and then they just go away for the rest of the day?  Why does a so called normal heart do that?  I don't know any other people that have that issue but docs say no big deal?

If you could clarify some of these questions I would be very appreicative!

Thank you!

[Cleveland Clinic]

We actually don't get very concerned about PVC's until they represent about 10 to 15% of all the heart beats in a 24 hour period.  This is because they can cause a cardiomyopathy (heart failure).  As far as a normal number, anywhere from a couple to a few per hour, probably close to 100 per day is probably normal.  Some people don't feel them at all.  Others, such as yourself, feel every one of them and have severe debilitating symptoms form them.  These patients we treat with medications, on most occasions, but if the symptoms persist, or the medications aren't well tolerated to proceed to an ablation procedure.  The reasons why your docs aren't concerned is because your heart is normal based on those tests.  People with normal hearts and PVC's have a very low risk of having sustained arrhythmias or sudden cardiac death.  This is not the case in patients who have heart failure or other structural heart disease. Normal hearts do that because of things such as caffeine, emotions, adrenaline, ephedra and even alcohol  There are excitable tissues in the heart that tend to be responsive to these chemicals/conditions.  If your symptoms are really bother you a great deal and you wish to do something about it I would first suggest a trials of medications such as beta blockers or calcium channel blockers.