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1392168 tn?1280074408

What does a PVC feel like/do I have them?

I went to the doctor complaining of this feeling in my chest. It happens once every few weeks, maybe once a week. It's like my breath is knocked out of me for a second, a flutter or skipped beat in my chest. My doctor said it was a PVC. All though I have seen people describe PVCs as just unrhythmic beats.

Are they normal? Are they what I'm having?

I am on Levothyroxine for an underactive thyroid and she says the conditions are related. Even if that is the sole cause, is it dangrous? Do I have a higher risk or anything?
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237039 tn?1264258057
I have had bouts with "missed" & "skipped" beats and described them in my mid 20s as "flutters'.  Here, 35 years later, I was diagnosed with SVTs.  Those were so very scarey. Not only could I feel them in my chest, you could feel the missed beats in my pulse.!  I told the doctor it would "take my breath away". But then it was making me feel faint and lightheaded.  It was at that point I was put on an antiarrhymthmic drug. (Amiodarone)  I took that for 9 months and then decided to quit.  I was having to be monotired while on the drug (blood tests and eye tests)and the side effects were so scary. For one thing I couldn't have any exposure to the sun and I am a beach person.  That was out of the question! No Sun! That would mean "No Fishing, too!  I haven't had any problems with those episodes returning and it has been about 2 years now.     Take care, Ally
Helpful - 0
967168 tn?1477584489
My pvc's feel like a dropped beat or a pause in my heart and my pac's feel like a fluttering in my chest & throat.  The only way to know for sure if you're having them is a cardiac workup - ekg, 24/hr holter, stress test etc.

If you google causes of pvc's, you'll find tons of causes and things you probably would be shocked could cause them.  Hormones, Electrolytes, Lifestyle, Sleep problems, things wrong in your blood levels such as potassium, magnesium, anaemia, anxiety, stress and the list goes on, and sometimes there's no cause.

Are they dangerous? Most likely not, but it all depends on where they orginate, what's causing them and how many pvc's daily you're experiencing.  Testing can point a cardiologist/EP to where they think they are originating, but they don't know 100% until they go in and do an EP Study, if you don't have structural heart damage, very symptomatic or a high frequency then they probably won't do one.  

I don't want others to think all pvc's are benign, because they aren't.  I was told in June/July 2009 that my pvc's were unifocal monomorphic when in fact they were multifocal polymorphic.  At that point I had seen 2 cardiologists & 2 EP's for 2nd opinions to be safe that an ablation was for me.

I've been told and read between 1-5% of pvc's are actually something to worry about, and the other 95-99% are benign, how true that is - no clue because in almost 16 months I haven't found proof of this.

Pvc's above 15% of the daily total heartbeat i.e. 15,000 pvc's in the normal 100,000 heartbeats/24 hours can and sometimes do lead to cardiomyopathy, which can be reversible.  There are some of us on the heart rhythm forum that have had pvc induced CM and it reverses when the pvc's are ablated.

However, some new 2010 research suggests that very frequent ventricular ectopy (>4000/24 h) may be associated with the development of cardiomyopathy related to abnormal electrical activation of the heart. This mechanism is thought to be similar to that of chronic right ventricular pacing associated cardiomyopathy."

Premature Ventricular Contraction: Follow-up - Mar 11, 2010
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/761148-followup

Here's a post from a CC dr that talks about VT; but addresses pvc's -
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Heart-Disease/Idiopathic-Ventricular-Tachycardia-Ablation/show/1327314

"The only thing worth assessing is the number of PVC's in a 24 hour period.  If it's greater than 15% of all the heart beats than there is a small risk of developing a PVC induced cardiomyopathy.  We typically don't ablate PVC's unless they are symptomatic or if they are very numerous (great than 15%)."

What you need to do is get your test results, look them over and if you've had a 24 holter try and pinpoint times you see these are happening and try to find a trigger for yours.  A good thing to do my dr's had me do was keep a journal of dates/times/symptoms and what I was doing at the time to see if there's a pattern.

For me, I live with these dreaded things even after lifestyle changes, medications, pacemaker/icd implanted, ablation and followup care - I'm one of the rare ones in the <1% my dr told me - that is lucky enough to be saddled with a diagnosis of "malignant" pvc's (polymorphic VT) they found during my EPS.  I went from 50,000 pvc's daily to 0 for a few days after surgery and then slowly they returned a few months after surgery to over 10,000 pvc's daily.

Good luck I hope you find some answers.  Let me know if you have any questions or feel free to PM me =)

Lisa
Helpful - 0
976897 tn?1379167602
That's correct, a cardiologist told me that everyone gets them but most people are just oblivious to them. He said the heart is basically kick starting the rhythm back to being synchronised again, like a reset switch. I get a single PVC on average once a week. I recognise it as something I've felt at times all my life, but never took any notice before. You sometimes get a feeling almost exactly the same when you get trapped air moving in your stomach. I've felt what I believed to be  a PVC a few times and simply belched.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
No it is not dangerous. Many people have them, but differently we are experiencing them. Some of us hardly can feel them, and for many that is a big issue, because what they feel upsets them. They are wrong. They should not be upset.
Try to take that as an experience, like your heart talking to you. Love your heart, it might sound childish but it is not if you think about it. Your heart is kicking sometimes with more excitement. That we call PVC...  Isn’t that wonderful? We have a  beautiful sensitive  HEART!
Helpful - 0
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