palpitation and pain in left arm

[snehlb]

I am 38 yrs old and for the last 1 month I have constant pain and palpitation in my left arm and it is worse when I walk or I lie down at night. I have high blood pressure 140/92 and my cholestrol is 165 mg my ECG is clear there is spinning sensation in the top of my head. some times I have irregular heart beats and I can hear my beats on lying down. my cardiologist has diagnosed it as cardiac neurosis. Kindly advice me.

[Jerry_NJ]

Thank god you've seen a doctor/doctors, you description reads real serious, but not knowing what "neurosis" is and given you are under a doctor's care it must not be a serous as it reads.

[kim8400]

ok, to the guy above me: just because someone has seen a doctor doesn't mean that they are ok. I think there are a lot of people on here who can vouch for that! snehlb, the question is what did the Dr. do for you? Did you wear a monitor to see exactly what these skips are, that would be the first step any doctor should take, but unfortunately most regular docs seem to think that ALL skips are the same, when in fact there can be very serious problems with certain kinds, meaning v-tach, a-fib, and sometimes even svt. I'm not trying to scare you, but if your doctor has not had you wear a heart monitor , I would call him and request one, just to be sure!!!!

[kim8400]

Neurosis means that you have a fear of something. For instance in this case, the doctor is saying that rather than having an actual physical heart condition, the patient is suffering from anxiety that they DO have a heart condition. I've heard that one more than once and it turns out that I have NSVT, which is non-sustained v-tach(very scary sometimes).

[RickDG]

You hit it on the head - just because you have seen a doctor deosn't mean a thing.  I was "diagnosed" with anxiety by my PC several years ago, but he never mentioned a monitor and I didn't know any better (I was in my mid 20's).  I just lived with it, didn't take any meds or anything.  My "anxiety" subsided until about three years ago, but when it came back about three years ago I figured anxiety again. I would get short runs of palpitations which tolerated fairly well and only lasted maybe 15 - 20 mins at a time.  In June of this year I had a night with palps which lasted several hours and then went away.  The next day, same thing and I went to the local community hospital Emergency Room. They promptly diagnosed SVT and gave me a host of meds (adenisine and a few others) which crashed my blood pressure and caused them to have to shock me twice.  They sent me via ambulance the next day to another hosptial with an EP lab.  When I got in the ambulance the EMT looked at my EKG and said "They told me you were in SVT, but this is V-Tach"  I thought the guy was a hotdog ambulance jockey wannabe doctor but it turns out he was right, they misdagnosed my V-Tach (sustained for several hours) and didn't catch it before they shipped me off the next day.  Several more episodes and three ablations later, I now realize I had V-Tach for years, as well as PVC's.  Good thing I have been going to the gym 4-5x a week my entire adult life and have kept my heart in otherwise good shape because I can tolerate the VT pretty well.  It always happened at night.

In my two subsequent visits to the ER for VTach I had to convince them it wasn't SVT, even though it was sustained and they could catch it on the EKG. The triage nurse during my visit last week (I had my last ablation on Thursday) was trying to tell me that my 185 bpm heart rate and low blood pressure was probably SVT, despite the fact that I told her I had a history of VT and had two recent ablations for it.  She said 185-190 was "low" for VT.  Didn't take long for my blood pressure to rise, lol.

Do not take a PC or ER doc's word for it.  Demand a monitor if you're having palps.  Peronally I prefer the event monitor because sometimes a 24 hour Holter just doesn't show everything.