Cardiac arrhythmias: causes and ways to prevent them

The normal functioning of the heart will be affected when one of the three components: heart muscle, heart valve, or nervous system is damaged. Damage to the cardiac nerve causes disturbance in the heart's conduction pulses, leading to heart chambers contracting without following

Heart model (Photo: smm.org)

self. Blood is pumped unevenly in the heart, resulting in blood stagnating in the heart while blood is not fully supplied to the circulatory system, causing cardiac arrhythmias.

The manifestation of arrhythmia

Some arrhythmias are non-manifest, but most cardiac arrhythmias are characterized by signs:

With tachycardia and irregular rhythm

Suspense, palpitations: heartbeat beating or pounding.

Dizziness: the heartbeat is beating for a moment.

Shortness of breath - shallow shortness of breath: bradycardia, or multiple spans appear in a short time.

Other common symptoms: chest pain, dizziness, dizziness, persistent mild headache.

When the heart rate suddenly beats rapidly, it can be a sign of life-threatening ventricular fibrillation.

With bradycardia

More discreet manifestations: constant fatigue, dizziness, mild headache, persistent fainting. Most patients with cardiac arrhythmias have fainted suddenly without warning. However, sometimes patients see some warning signs: dizziness, dizziness; see the blue halo ahead; sweating; vomiting or nausea; distention; palpitations; headache; confused or difficult to express thoughts.

The cause of arrhythmia

Everyone experienced the feeling of his heart beating disorderly for a moment, but that appearance passed and did not affect life. But there are also arrhythmias that exist, affect or endanger life and need to be diagnosed and treated promptly.

The cause of arrhythmia can be divided into congenital causes and the causes of:

Congenital causes: Symptoms may be small or appear in any stage of life.

The cause is: cardiomyopathy, heart valves and some other causes affecting the cardiac nervous system, leading to abnormal activities of the cardiac nervous system.

Some common arrhythmias

Supraventricular tachycardia, may experience manifestations such as:

Atrial tachycardia: Occurs a different rhythm of the sinus node in the atria, it emits pulses that overwhelm the impulse from the sinus node causing the heart to beat very fast and irregularly.

Atrial fibrillation: Atrial fibrillation contributes rapidly and rapidly up to over 350 beats / minute, and causes the ventricles to contract rapidly and irregularly. This arrhythmia easily leads to other arrhythmias. Atrial fibrillation is a sign of chronic fatigue, blood stasis, and stroke risk 5 times higher than people without atrial fibrillation.

Atrial flutter: It is the state of the atrium that beats very fast, even up to 300 beats / minute and consequently the heart beats very fast and irregularly.

Fast sinus rhythm: Fast sinus rhythm is common during anxiety or exercise, the rhythm will return to normal when resting. In some conditions, such as high fever, anemia or hyperthyroidism, sinus tachycardia is also present and the heart rate will return to normal when the disease is treated.

Ventricular tachycardia due to ventricular fibrillation.

Ventricular tachycardia

Idiopathic ventricular tachycardia: Because a group of cells in the ventricles emit pulses that stimulate the ventricles to contract, causing the ventricles to contract unevenly with the atria.

Ventricular tachycardia due to ischemic heart disease: The area of ​​the heart muscle with anemia in coronary artery disease causes scars, this scar forms abnormal pathways of impulse transmission in the ventricles, stimulating the ventricles to contract. no need for impulses from the atrium to move down.

With these two lesions, the ventricles contract when they do not contain enough blood, so the heart beats very fast but the blood is not pumped enough to the circulatory system. Patients often feel tired, have difficulty concentrating, fast breathing. If not treated promptly, ventricular fibrillation will occur.

Slow arrhythmia

When the heart rate slows to less than 60 beats per minute, there is a risk of not providing enough blood to the circulatory system, but for those who are constantly active in their physical activity, their heart rate may be below 60 beats per minute.

Delayed arrhythmias may cause no obvious manifestations, may present the following symptoms: fatigue, dizziness, lightheadedness, headache, shallow breathing, or fainting.

Slow arrhythmias are divided into two main categories:

- Weakness of the sinus node: Weakening of the sinus node is not a specific disease, it is represented by a group of symptoms that show that the sinus node does not maintain normal operation. Heartbeat can alternately switch from bradycardia to tachycardia.

- Atrioventricular block: atrioventricular block is the phenomenon of impulse impede when going from the atria to the ventricles.

Treatment: Depending on the cause of the heart rhythm disorder, there are treatments such as medication, cardiovascular intervention or surgery. Regardless of the treatment, patients must perform good life habits such as exercise, no smoking, proper diet and living.

How to prevent cardiac arrhythmias?

- Choose a good living habit: exercise regularly, eat low fat, eat lots of vegetables and foods that contain lots of vitamins, maintain weight at the allowable level.

- No smoking.

- Limit the use of heart stimulants such as coffee and alcohol.

- Avoid stress, ensure enough rest time.

- Periodic health check.

- Good treatment of related diseases: atherosclerosis, high blood fat, coronary artery disease, valvular disease, thyroid disease .