Okay, this is a common misconception and inaccurate association is being drawn between benign palpitations as a consequence of vagus nerve stimulation and alternatively clinical arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation. The events you and others here are experiencing are not universal by any means, but indeed that is what you are suggesting.

Understand that there are a tremendous number of pathological arrhythmias and it is these events for which the literature is drafted, more especially to a medically trained audience. You can't simply peruse over this type of literature on the internet and derive some type of common sense association between the discussion points and your own symptoms. If it were in any way that simplistic, I and countless other physicians would have been able to avoid years of education and training.

Benign palpitations constitutes a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning that when we evaluate you using diagnostic equipment, we are searching for the presence of all factors known to represent risk. If they are absent, then the absolute only other cause for the palpitations is one that is benign in origin.

Patients commonly ask the question "But how on earth do I know whether the next ones I experience are harmless? I've had some that are different than the ones I normally experience. It's those that frighten me so much."

The kind of underlying pathology which produces arrhythmias which are of concern and risk cannot simply appear like throwing a switch, the elements of which actually take many years to develop. In other words, you don't experience benign palpitations associated with anxiety and stress one day and suddenly have pathological arrhythmias the next. That is a presumptive possibility created entirely in the minds of patients due to a lack of the requisite background and training in medicine.

You'll be fine. While you may indeed experience variation in the palpitations, it in no way suggests they are suddenly composed of a pathological type that could place you at risk. It absolutely does not work in such a fashion. Again, irrational fear produces this unrealistic potential.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)