It doesn't seem to matter how many times we read that pvc's are benign in a structurally normal heart, when you are a frequent sufferer it can be very hard to get it through your head that they are not going to kill you.

Anyway, here is a summary of a study by one of the world's main heart reasearchers, H L Kennedy, which should give us all a little reassurance:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2578212

In case the link doesn't work, this is what it says:

Long-term follow-up of asymptomatic healthy subjects with frequent and complex ventricular ectopy:

They followed 73 sufferers of frequent ectopics (pvc's) over 10 years. These folk had an average of 566 pvc's per hour - some had 1,994 per hour!

They were healthy and had had ekgs and echocardiograms, and didn't have symptoms like shortness of breath or pain, though 20% had some heart disease. Over the 10 years, the people in the study with pvc's did not fare any worse than the general population in terms of death rates.

"[b]We conclude that the long-term prognosis in asymptomatic healthy subjects with frequent and complex ventricular ectopy is similar to that of the healthy U.S. population and suggests no increased risk of death.[/b]"

I hope this helps to put our fears in perspective. It's terrifying to have hundreds of these palpitations a day and so hard to accept that they will not cause sudden death or heart attack.

However, the facts seem to show that even if you have on average over 13,000 (yes, 13 thousand!) pvc's a day, your risk of death is no worse than anyone elses.

What is interesting to me is that the study showed 20% of the people had CAD - this is the issue we should be addressing. We worry about the pvc's because we feel them, but heart disease is the killer that is creeping up on us. I am trying to change my diet to avoid heart disease as I think in the long run that is what will kill me, not the pvc's.