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Heart Palpitations Forum >> Symptoms and other concerns >> Frequency of ectopics - what's normal?
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Message started by beadbabe on Feb 13^th, 2007, 9:52am

Title: Frequency of ectopics - what's normal?
Post by beadbabe on Feb 13^th, 2007, 9:52am

Hi there
I have had two really reassuring emails from RLR about my symptoms but the one thing that keeps creeping into my head today is the frequency of my ventricular ectopics. People are on here worried that they have fifteen in a day but I have about up to three or four a minute sometimes close together, which is thousands per day. How many is dangerous and how do I know my heart will prevent this from turning into ventricular tachycardia and then proceed into something inevitably worse and horrible which - i have to be honest - is what I am thinking.

And how do the doctors know I don't have something wrong with my heart health - can they tell from the ecg?

How many ectopics is dangerous? How many is normal?

Kind regards and best of health to everyone
beadbabe

Title: Re: Frequency of ectopics - what's normal?
Post by saab on Feb 13^th, 2007, 12:12pm

I would be interested to know this too. I can often take my pulse and not feel any. At other times I can feel them every two or three beats. I have had ecg's (though not in the last two and a half years), but not an echocardiogram or stress test. Doctors have never been concerned enough to do these tests I guess. In fact in the last ecg the leads were only on my chest very briefly - at the back of my mind I always wonder if they missed something.

Title: Re: Frequency of ectopics - what's normal?
Post by RLR on Feb 13^th, 2007, 3:06pm

Okay, your anxiety over this issue is leading you to associations that are incorrect. Benign palpitations do not lead to dangerous arrhythmias because they are being caused by different mechanisms. Your heart is healthy and therefore will not subcumb to the type of events we associate with heart disease.

It's important when things tend to be crowding in on you to go back to basics and remember your anatomy, together with exactly what is occuring when palpitations of the nature being experienced take place. You must not let your mind tell you that anything is possible, because it isn't. We are able to make great predictions with striking accuracy about health matters because the human physiology is an extremely predictable process based upon hundreds of years of experience and research.

What creates the problem in the mind of an anxious person is not the event itself, but rather the mind's unrelenting vigilence toward the unidentified fears that propel them into a state of panic. Associations are made that can either bring relief or alternatively elevate fears to a point requiring intervention. It is the source of what kindles the nervous system to respond in unrecognizable ways to the patient.

In short, your hearts are fine. Benign palpitations do not lead to worse things. Again, it's not the heart that is causing the disturbance at all, which would be the case where dangerous arrhythmias are concerned. We know you're healthy from the results we receive on diagnostic testing. Heart disease was used to create the algorithms or measures by which the test is performed, so if disease is not present, then it will show negative on the test. As for "missing" things, we do a pretty good job I'm afraid to say, and we use the latest available technology to help us. Just because you have a symptom, does not mean that you have a disease. When you feel sea-sick as a consequence of wave motion disturbing the vestibular process, it does not mean you now have a disease or that there's something wrong with you.

It only means that your sensory factors have been altered such that it induces a physical response. The very same thing is happening with benign palpitations occuring as a consequence of Vagus nerve stimulation. You're going to be just fine.

Best regards and Good Health

Title: Re: Frequency of ectopics - what's normal?
Post by saab on Feb 13^th, 2007, 4:36pm

Thanks for that RLR. It is very frustrating to me that my logic goes out of the window when it comes to my (and my family's) health. I'm very grateful that we have you to help us understand the actual physiology and apply some common sense. I'm not usually up this late but couldn't sleep tonight (though not worrying about my heart for once). Thanks again.