Paxil withdrawl and PVCs

[sparkme]

Thank goodness I found this site. It has been so frustrating thinking I was the only one out there with this problem. 20 years ago I was diagnosed with mild mitral and tricuspid valve prolapses and i've had PVCs for 20 years. Mostly stayed off caffeine and everything was fine enough. They didn't bother me and when I did feel one or two of them, I just said to myself, oops, must have been that cup of coffee.  In the meantime, ten years ago I got on Paxil for a depression, but have had diffifulty getting off of it for the horrendous withdrawal symptoms (electrical zaps, weird thoughts, feeling terrorized).  I found that weaning off of Paxil has not had any of those symptoms but it's taken me a couple of symptom free years to get weaned off completely. I've been paxil free for a month now.   Everything was going well this month until the last few days when I've been having what seem to be sudden extreme attacks of PVC's where they last for ten minutes, include sweating, difficulty breathing, weakness, and sometimes chest pressure.  In between attacks I've also had a lot of PVCs all day long.  I've had five or six of these extreme episodes in the last three days.  A brief workup at the emergency room concluded trigeminys and pvcs but no change to heart valves. They also weren't able to get an attack on the ekg's. I'm wondering if these sudden multi- PVC attacks have anything to do with SSRI withdrawal? Any help would be so appreciated. I'm going crazy here with these things.

[Momto3]

Hi sparkme!!

Welcome to the Heart Rhythm forum!  We're glad you found us, too.

I'm not sure if going off of an SSRI would set off the PVCs. I'm sure it's possible, but maybe you are more aware of them, or they are more intense...Also, some women, including me, noticed big changes in PVCs with hormonal fluctuations.  

I do have one suggestion to help you get to the bottom of what's going on.  You may want to ask your doctor to give you a Holter monitor (basically a 24 hour home EKG) or an event monitor.  The event monitor is usually worn for 30 days, and the patient will have a chance to record his/her heart's activity at the time symptoms occur.  Catching it on a 30 second or 1 minute EKG just doesn't always work.  Like you said, nothing shows up and they send you on your way.  The Holter monitor is usually worn for 24 hours (sometimes longer) and it constantly records your heart's activity.  When you have symptoms, you write down the symptom and the time.  The doctor can correlate your symptoms to what's on the EKG strip.  Personally, I prefer the event monitor IF your "weird" beats occur at random times.

Please let us know how you're doing.

Connie

[dolfnlvr]

I had horrible episodes with my PVC's when I came off of Paxil.  I'm not exactly sure why, but my body does better with prozac than paxil.  Nearly every time that I have had an "attack" of SVT it was during a time when I was trying to wean off of paxil.  Mostly I would just go back on the paxil and decide, well, it's better on than off.  Then I got permission to switch to Prozac and I haven't been brave enough to try coming off of that yet.  Don't know if it's general SSRI's, or just Paxil or just a coincidence, but I noticed a similar trend.