Please help- psvt ruining my life

[Scared_heartbeat]

Hello everyone,

I had posted one more time on the forum. I am 26 years old and was diagnosed with psvt around march or so.

Trying to pinpoint my symptoms down, i would say that the triggers that i have found so far are: if i get really anxious/panicky, food seems to be causing a lot of episodes to me and also sometimes coffee might trigger the episode. Smoking also causes me sometimes skipped beats which i would assume could lead to a psvt also.

It seems to me that a lot of my problems are because of my stomach. I have been diagnosed with gastritis and possible gerd(possible cause that wasn't through an endoscopy). I have troubles eating/digesting a lot, gas and everything and i can feel a lot of times things coming up my throat.

Lately i have been trying to deal with it with a small dose of beta blocker, which seems to help the heart rate but not so much for the skipped beats. Plus it makes my stomach pretty upset after i get it and i get gerd after it.

The thing is, all that has been ruining my life... I am an gad sufferer and when those episodes hit i get even more anxious and then i think about it all the time, which i guess makes it even worse.

Last time i got an episode was about 2 months ago, not anything big. Now i have been getting them one or twice a say for the past three days if i dont take a pill. I am not sure what kind of psvt i have, i just know that i dont have wpw. It was caught on an event monitor that i had on for 30 days and the highest i think it caught was at 182 pulses.

With all that also lately my blood pressure has been having spikes. The day that it happened(friday) i was feeling a bit weird and took my blood pressure. When i saw that it was 150/ 120 i got scared and then boom, next thing i know i take my bp and numbers are normal but pulse is at 157. Today also had a reading of 138/107 which also scared me a lot. Normal for me is around 110/70 sometimes lower if i am relaxed.

I am just really scared that something is really wrong with me and i will die. My wife is getting frustrated and i am stranded all day in bed thinking when it will happen next...

I am still not sure which is the exact cause, every doctor that i talked to about the stomach issues seemed to not think that there is any connection.

I am sorry for the long post, would appreciate some answers as i feel really desperate,

John.

[branjie]

I am concerned about your high blood pressure. Is a doctor medicating and monitoring you regarding this? Smoking as you probably know could be making your SVT and blood pressure worse so it's really important that you keep working at quitting. Sitting in bed makes you hyper aware of what is going on with your heart, giving you anxiety, making things worse. Try distracting yourself by getting out doors or helping your wife with a few light duties like folding some washing (your wife will probably love you being so thoughtful, and ease her frustration with your situation). As for the endoscopy, you'll be monitored and taken care of if you have an SVT during the procedure, try not to stress about that. For reflux I find eating little and often works wonders. I hope things improve for you soon.

[tom_h]

Keep in mind that Michelle and I had almost a lifetime of SVT.  Mine started at 6 and I was cured as I neared 60.  The arrhythmia in most instances isn't life threatening.  The Wolff-Parkinson-White form of SVT is the only one than can present a dangerous situation under certain circumstances, and is a very, very small percentage.  WPW is perhaps the only form of SVT that lease a calling card while in normal sinus rhythm.  A trained physician can see the unusual waveform on an EKG and pretty much determine if you have Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.   The other forms of SVT in the AVRT and AVNRT families are pretty much hard to determine until they go in and map the electrical system in your heart.  Until you have this done, don't worry!  Until you can get this looked at, empower yourself by learning the methods to convert to NSR when you have an episode.  I used Valsalva my for my estimated thousand+ events, and never once had to go to the ER for chemical or electrical conversion.  Knowing you can slow it down yourself really takes the anxiety down a lot.

[MichelleP_3811]

The fact he says there is an extra circuit and that the success was at 98% means it isn't afib so no worries there.  So try not to be concerned about death.  It's not likely to happen.  Just sit and relax and do what you can to get it to stop.  The more you stress with it the worse you will feel when you have an episode so just try to breath through it as best you can.  Remind yourself you will be fine.  Best of luck getting it corrected.  Keep us posted on your progress.

[Scared_heartbeat]

Thank you again for all the info!

When i had gone to the doctor(cardiologist), when they caught that on the recorder(the had a specific call center that would notify them apparently) the thing that he explained to me was exactly " as your heart is, there is an extra circuit that when the beat from the sinus node goes down, it doesnt let it go all the way doen but rather it senda it back up which in responce triggers another beat and so on".

I am not sure what the afib symptoms are, but my symptoms when that thing happens are:
Palpitations, Super fast heart beat, Anxiety(fear of dying), urgency to urinate, shakiness, and a little bit of dizziness.

I will probably go to an EP soon, out of pocket, but what to do, but i hope its more svt than afib cause afib scares me a lot more :/

I am not sure if it makes any difference or not on what it was, but the doctor had told me that the ablation has a 98% success rate back then.

[MichelleP_3811]

Odds are with any sort of svt you will be fine.  VT can be dangerous but generally not svt.  Afib can in some people be dangerous but usually only after they have reverted back to normal sinus rhthym.  Usually this is because the person throws a clot but I think one has to be in afib for quite a while for the clots to form and there are some other factors that specifically have to do with the person so odds are more likely your heart will tolerate whatever kind of svt you have just fine, even if it is a fib.  I don't know for sure whether or not an ekg would state afib or just label it svt but if it is just regular svt then that is even less a threat then afib as well you would also have much better and easier odds for a cure.  Well I do hope you can get some insurance so you can go see a cardiologist about all of this.  You really need to see one but try not to stress.  Anything that has to do with the atria is fairly harmless to us so no worries.  Like I said, I had svt all my life, and spent a good 5 or more years having weekly episodes and my heart is just fine so just manage it as best you can, like drinking the cold water to get it to stop and hopefully you can keep the episodes to a minimum until you can get it properly treated.  Take care.

[Scared_heartbeat]

Thank you for all the info!

The event monitor that i had in the states was the one that would record by itself also everytime that it would sense anything abnormal and i could also record myself. In the 30 days period of time the recorder caught i think a couple of svt. The reports from the monitor was like an ekg's which means that it would write on top what was going on.

I only saw it recording the psvt of the 182 and i think one time it recorder for a second an atrial flutter. Wouldn't it write afib if it was something like that? I still haven't seen an EP due to the fact that i recently moved back to my country(greece) and i haven't had insurance yet.

I am just getting really scared of something bad happening when i get them :(

[MichelleP_3811]

I guess I would ask your EP specifically if you had afib or regular svt.  There is a huge difference in the success rates for ablation.  Regular svt is highly curable by ablation, something like 98% success with only 2% risk. Afib isn't as easily cured and does have a higher reoccurance rate though I am not sure the percents for it.  I did have a lot more ectopic activity after my ablation but it settles down after a while and I haven't had any svt in 3 years after 45 years of it and it getting to a point of having weekly episodes.  It does sound like maybe your stomach is a big component in triggering you.  Issues with the stomach can irritate the vagus nerve with then sends signals to the heart so it isn't so much the stomach but the vagus nerve that is touching off the heart.   As for having an episode while under, it happened to me while having surgery for a uterine fibroid.  This was prior to my having a lot of episodes.  I had them very rarely and they stopped on their own pretty quickly so I never gave much thought to my svt.  Anyways, when I was in recovery my surgeon stated that my vitals went a bit crazy but they stabilized me and all went well.  Basically they will know what to do if you get an episode while having a medical procedure.  But do clarify whether or not your svt is afib or not because if you have a regular kind it may be easier to fix then you realize.  Take care.

[Scared_heartbeat]

Thank both so much for the responces!

To answer the questions first, the did tell me about the ablation, but i have also heard about many people that did it and now they end up having other heart problems because of it, or they had to do a 2nd, 3rd or even 4th ine and still nothing. Thats why i am so thoughtful about it and not sure that i want to do it.

For how i experience it at least, it kinda starts going up and down slowly, doesnt seem to break in an instance and i can rarely do anything to stop it, thank god it stops by itself fairly quickly. On the other hand for me drinking cold water seems to be helping, as well as burping also. What i saw on the event recorder was: sinus tachucardia, onset to psvt and then from psvt back to sinus tachy. I guess i was pretty anxious also for the tachy to be there.

Amazing thing is that most of the times, when laying in bed it will be lower, if i get up to use the bathroom because i also get a tendency to urinate with that, it will skyrocket to the god, from 120-140 might go up to 200 or so. Today it started and then stopped but when i got really anxious for a second it started again and i had to take a pill.

The only thing that always kinda makes me thoughtful is that 99% of the times when it happens, it will either be on an empty stomach when i drink coffee for example or feel things coming up my throat or when i eat after an X amount of time. Especially after i eat lately it is almost certain that it will happen. Today as soon as i ate i started getting skipped beats and then after like 10-15 mins there we go, started again.

Sometimes when it starts, i dunnot feel any skipped beats tho, i feel a fast heart rate which steadily starts going up. When the psvt starts tho, i almost always now that it is that and not panic or something else.

I am trying to quit smoking and want to do another endoscopy, the only thing that i was scared of was that when they do the endoscopy, what if they touch something there and the beat goes off while i am drugged?

Anyone any insight on that by chance?

[pvctom]

hi,

i have GERD, PVCs and you mentioned a beta blocker. sometimes when my PVCs are acting up I get all kinds of crazy runs. they can last for weeks, then they die down (no pun). i have read about GERD related PVCs, bloating, Hiatal Hernia and even positional PVCs that in my case, sometimes lead into crazy flips, and runs. I had to stop eating heavy meals, and definately had to stop smoking. Smoking is the worst thing I ever did to my Cardiovascular system. Not trying to get off on a lecture, so I will say try not to worry too much. the less worry and obsession over PVCs and ectopic beats, the better. take care

[MichelleP_3811]

Were you offered an ablation to correct the psvt?  It is usually pretty easily treated so long as you are active enough for them to get it going during the study so they can map it and know where to ablate.  it is a bit expensive though in the States.  Though stomach issues aren't the cause of one having an svt they can help trigger an episodes because they can cause the heart to have ectopic beats and the disruption of the beat cycle with a pac or pvc allows the psvt an option to go off.  Do you notice that your svt starts and stops in one beat or does it ramp up and down more slowly?  If you have some sort of tachycardia not due to extra muscle tissue (these are the types that start and stop in one beat) then the others are a bit harder to fix so I suggest trying to watch and manage your stomach issues, eating large meals, carbohydrates and sugary, stress and caffeine and see if it helps your heart feel better.  Best of luck getting a handle on things.  Take care.