PVC/PAC

[gopo92]

If a person's heart rate is within normal range even when it includes 10 to 12 skipped beats does that still weaken heart muscles ???

[Mom2four85]

I think pvc's/pac's are contradicted between dr's.  I've been told and read that dr's usually do not worry about pvc's unless they're above 15%-20% of your total daily heartbeats 24/h (search the expert forum there's a few posts on this - http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Heart-Disease/Idiopathic-Ventricular-Tachycardia-Ablation/show/1327314) and if those high numbers (15,000+ pvc's daily) continue then it MAY but doesn't always lead to pvc induced cardiomyopathy, which normally reverses with treatment.

However, emerging new data from March 2010 suggests that very frequent ventricular ectopy (>4000/24 h) may be associated with the development of cardiomyopathy related to abnormal electrical activation of the heart.  http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/761148-followup

Ablation is indicated for frequent, symptomatic PVCs despite medical therapy. Success is variable depending on frequency and inducibility at the time of electrophysiologic study.

Patients with underlying chronic structural heart disease (eg, cardiomyopathy, infarction, valvular disease) and complex ectopy (eg, >10 PVCs/h) have a significantly increased rate of mortality.

Left ventricular dysfunction has a stronger association with increased mortality rate than do PVCs. Many now believe that PVCs reflect the severity of heart disease rather than contribute to arrhythmogenesis.

EPS has a primary role in risk stratification of patients with frequent or complex PVCs. Patients with PVCs that are noninducible (ie, unable to trigger ventricular tachycardia during stimulation) have a low risk of sudden death.

There is alot of info in this article and the previous one; if you read all through it will explain more and shows the previous article if you follow the links.

[bbxx]

I am not sure what you mean. Do you have pvcs or pacs? Have you been to a cardiologist? If your heart is healthy, they say its fine to have skipped beats. I can  tell you many people on here have lived with thousands of skipped beats per day and it did not weaken the heart muscle. Its not super common for the heart to be damaged from skipped beats. The cardiologists on here say that usually you have to be skipping 10,000 or more beats before it starts to damage your heart. If your heart is doing funny things, you should have a cardiologist check you out and do an echo to look at your heart structure etc.... and they can monitor your heart to see what you are feeling. Most normal hearts will skip a few beats here and there.