Heart skips a beat

[Tenny]

What exactly does it mean when your heart skips a beat?

[Szoopermom]

I am coming off of Paxil, and I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but now I'm feeling dull pain with skipping of beats?  Should I be concerned.  I don't have any other issues with my heart it's just really uncomfortable and to be honest I'm scared.

[SillyHeart]

In actuality, it's not a skipped beat you're feeling but the pause after an EXTRA beat.  Like this:

beat..beat..beat..beatbeat.........beat


It doesn't usually "mean" anything at all.  They're common and usually harmless.

[Artaud]

Hi,

It's more or less a generic term for any noticed brief alteration in the heart's rhythm. With me, PVCs have always been a problem. When a PVC occurs, the beat occurs before it was expected to (Premature Ventricular Contraction). When this happens, their is a pause, called the Compensatory Pause, allowing the heart to normally prepare for the next beat.  

Or, in the technical sense "The pause following an extrasystole, when the pause is long enough to compensate for the prematurity of the extrasystole; the short cycle ending with the extrasystole plus the pause following the extrasystole together equal two of the regular cycles.”.

It is not likely that the premature beat is felt, this passes in a split second, but the pause causes the heart to fill with more blood than usual. When the heart does contract, it now has to eject the additional blood, which, of course, requires more effort. This additional effort is what most people really identify the skip as being. From experience, the pause can seem to be quite lengthy.

Be well.