heart skipped a beat

[kittyh16]

I am 29 years old and have MVP and have experienced pac's before. I was checking my pulse tonight and it stopped twice for about a second both times. It made me feel very strange when it did it. Is this normal? Can it harm me?

[Jerry_NJ]

What you've told me moves me to one of my usual suggestions, take an aspirin (or half of one or a low dose) each day with a meal.  My reason?  A missed beat may be a fibrillation, my problem, and a if there is any atrial fibrillation or flutter the chance of a blood clot is increased.  Not to worry, the risk is low, but why take even that chance?  However, if you can not tolerate aspirin, then don't take it.  It seems to go well in my stomach as long as I take it with a meal, breakfast is my practice.  

MVP without an serious leakage should not cause problems, and if your cardiologist wasn't concerned, i.e., you heart chambers are not enlarged, that seems to be your case.  I had what was called a leaky mitral valve, which I think is just a bad case of MVP.  It was causing an enlargement of my left atrial chamber, so action had to be taken to stop it.  I am much older than you, so whatever my condition was at age 30, nothing problematic came up until I was almost 60.  Then it was Atrial Fibrillation, not missed beats.  AFib is much more common in people over 60 than in younger people, I'm not suggesting that you have that problem.  

Hope I didn't ramble too much to be of any help.

[kittyh16]

No I am not on any medication for the MVP. I had an echo done by my cardiologist and so he was able to tell me that day. I checked my radial pulse that is usually the best one to go with when checking pulse. I know that my MVP contributes to the palpatations but it just freaked me out when it skipped. I knew that it skipped because of the pause and because of the way it made me feel like my breath had been taken away. I have just noticed that as the years go on it seems like the fllutters get worse. I am in the medical field but i generally dont ask the doctors that i work with a lot of questions because i dont want them to think i am crazy. It is just frustrating...

[Jerry_NJ]

Are you taking any medications for your MVP?  How was that condition diagnosed?

How did you check you pulse, with you fingers on a vein, or some other method?  I know in my case if I want to monitor every beat  I have to use a stethoscope.  My point: you may be missing a beat that is really there due to errors in your measurement technique.  

Whatever the case, I am not aware of any connection between MVP (how serious?) and missed heart beats.