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Ever felt that your heart has skipped a beat, fluttering or beating too fast? This feeling or sensation is called heart palpitations. It may not last for too long but can trigger panic among people. While most of the times they are harmless and could be due to anxiety, stress, pregnancy, vigorous physical activity or excess caffeine, acid reflux, hormonal changes, one should not ignore it as there could be an underlying heart issue causing these palpitations. (Also read: Can you get a heart attack by sitting for too long? Cardiologist on how to calculate risk, prevention tips)
Leading a healthy lifestyle like doing regular exercise, controlling blood pressure, diabetes, avoiding smoking and alcohol is useful in managing palpitations, says Dr TS Kler, Chairman, Fortis Heart & Vascular Institute, Fortis Hospital, Gurugram.
Causes of heart palpitations
But why does one experience these palpitations in the first place? Dr Kler says this may happen due to fast heart beat called tachycardia, irregular heart beat or forceful heart contractions due to volume overload of heart either because of excessive shunting of blood from left sided chambers to right sided chambers like Atrial Septal defect or ventricular septal defect.
The cardiologist says they may also occur when there is leaking of mitral or aortic valve (these are left-sided heart valves. Palpitations also occur due to forceful heart contractions in Aortic stenosis.
Anxiety is one of the reason
Citing anxiety as one of the common causes of heart palpitations, Dr Kler says many patients with palpitations have normal heart on Echo and the main problem is heart rhythm trouble. “These abnormal palpitations may arise from upper or lower chambers of heart and most of these can be permanently cured by Radio Frequency Ablation which is a non-surgical treatment,” the expert adds.
Treatment of heart palpitations
The treatment will vary from case to case, says the cardiologist.
– If there is hole in the heart, it needs to be closed
– If there is leaking of valve, then valve surgery by repair or replacement is the answer
-Most of palpitations arising from upper or lower chamber of heart with structurally normal heart can be cured by Radio Frequency Ablation. These are called Supraventricular (PSVT) or Ventricular Palpitations due to anxiety needing counselling or psychiatric help.
How to prevent heart palpitations
“Apart from lifestyle changes, the best way to diagnose the exact cause of any palpitations is to record ECG during the episode of palpitation. If that is not possible, we can do Electrophysiology study in EP lab, which is done under Local anaesthesia and if abnormal tachycardia is detected, this can be cured by RFA,” concludes Dr TS Kler.
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