incident rate of pvc's?

[Mom2four85]

Ok maybe that's not what I'm trying to ask; but what IS the number of people who suffer arrhythmia's - US and world wide???  

I'm really intrigued and I know we ALL want information on pvc's; especially when such a well known place as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2913541 The US Library of Medicine - the National Institutes of Health gives the number that 5% of us arrhythmia sufferes have Malignant arrhythmia's.  That was published in 1989, I would like to see an updated total.

I made the comment in another thread that 5% was not alot - whoa was I wrong...here's something to think about:

I know the AHA says that 850,000 US people are hospitalized every year for arrhythmia's, so then out of 850,000 US patients that are hospitalized 42,500 of those would have malignant arrhythmia's - forty two thousand people have malignant arrhythmia's in the US, yet all of us are told pvc's are benign and nothing to worry about?

With the population of the US @ 310,917,185 and the world @ 6,903,225,316; I've read and been told that virtually EVERYONE suffers some at one point in their lives, if you follow that line of thinking...[drum roll] someone else do the math to see if I'm correct....

it would be 5% of 310,917,185 people in the US = 1,5545,859 and 5% of 6,903,225,316 world wide = 345,161,265....would have malignant heart arrhythmia's...how is that even possible?

anyone else have concrete information about incident rate of pvc's US or worldwide or incident rates of malignant arrhythmia's? That's the only thing I've found since I started searching back in June 2009.

[Mom2four85]

opps I forgot this part -

Each year about 295,000 emergency medical services-treated out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the United States.  SCA is the abrupt loss of heart function in a person who may or may not have diagnosed heart disease.

SCA is not to be confused with heart attacks - "The term "massive heart attack" is often mistakenly used to describe sudden cardiac arrest. While a heart attack may cause cardiac arrest and sudden death, the terms don't mean the same thing."

[Mom2four85]

CFS, I'm not sure I haven't found alot of information on ma's, which makes me question even more - why not? why isn't more research being done and more patients being told ALL pvc's are benign unless we have structural heart problems? really makes me wonder

[Mom2four85]

Here's the article:
About 5 percent of the arrhythmia's are serious, life threatening, malignant arrhythmias (MA). The MA is regularly associated with organic heart diseases (coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathy, valvular heart diseases), but a MA can develop without cardiac disorders e.g. in long QT syndrome or WPW syndrome.

The most frequent type of the MA is the ventricular tachycardia (VT), mostly the sustained VT, not rarely degenerating to ventricular fibrillation (VF). The primary VF represents a rarer form of MA.

The usual type of MA is the tachycardiac form, but there exists a MA with dominating bradycardia (bradycardia syncope, tachycardia associated with long lasting bradycardia).

In the diagnosis of MA new investigatory methods (signal averaged electrography with high amplification, Holter monitoring, programmed electrical stimulation) play an important role. In the therapy of the MA the first step is the treatment of the cardiac disease involved in the pathogenesis of the MA.

At present only about the 40% of the MA can be effectively treated with antiarrhythmic drugs. The pacemaker therapy is very efficacious in the bradycardiac type of MA. Cardiodefibrillator pacemaker can be used for the treatment of grave VT or VF.

Electrical transvenous catheter ablation, heart surgical intervention can also be applied in the treatment of special MA.

The prognosis of VA was very serious a decade ago, now with application of newer therapeutical procedure the prognosis of MA is permanently improving.

So what does classify as arrhythmia?  the AHA says this - "The term "arrhythmia" refers to any change from the normal sequence of electrical impulses, causing abnormal heart rhythms. Arrhythmias may be completely harmless or life-threatening."

So is the NCBI lumping all arrhythmia's together? sounds like it - which would make it a very high number; especially when they quote over 850,000 americans are hospitalized with arrhythmia's each year.

any concrete numbers from well cited places like NCBI, EHJ, AHA etc that show how many people suffer arrhythmia's in general?

[is_something_wrong]

I'm not sure what the definition of an arrhythmia is.

I guess PVCs and PACs doesn't count, at least not until a certain number, because we all have them.

I guess (I underline guess) the "classification" is about as follows:

Normal phenomena:
PACs
PVCs without heart disease, at least if <1000 / 24 hrs
1st degree AV block during high vagal activity
2nd degree Wenchebach block during high vagal activity
Pauses less than 2,7 seconds awake and 3 seconds during sleep
Sinus tachycardia/bradycardia without hemodynamic affection
Incomplete RBBB

Benign arrhythmias:
Nonsustained atrial tachycardia
AV nodal reentry tachycardia without hemodynamic affection
Short atrial flutter with 1:3 block or higher
Short atrial fibrillation
Complex PVCs without heart disease (couplets, multiform)
Complete RBBB

Borderline arrhythmias:
Sustained atrial flutter
Sustained atrial fibrillation with controlled ventricular response
Atrial flutter with 2:1 block
2nd degree Wenchebach at daytime
2nd degree Hay (type 2) AV block at night
NSVT without heart disease
Inappropriate sinus tachycardia
WPW (AVRT) with slow conduction.
Complex PVCs with heart disease
LBBB
"Mild" Sick sinus syndrome

Malignant arrhythmias:
Sustained VT
Ventricular fibrillation
WPW with fast conduction
Atrial flutter with 1:1 conduction
Supraventricular arrhythmias with hemodynamic consequences like fainting
Sustained atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response
Early PVCs with heart disease
Ion-channel pathology (LQTS, Brugada, CPVT)
Polymorphic VT (Torsades, bidirectional)
2nd degree Hay (AV block) at daytime
3rd degree AV block
Complex block (RBBB + LAB etc..)
Advanced sick sinus syndrome

I think that should be it :) Again, this is just what I think

[CFS56]

In 1989 didn't they consider PVCs to be far more dangerous than they do now?  Wasn';t it in the 90s they started thinking they were no big deal most of the time?

[Mom2four85]

ugh please forgive the grammar and spelling