Tachycardia

Hey everyone I'm Abi, it has been a while since I have been on here but I have recently been diagnosed with tachycardia and I was hoping to get a bit of input and advice.

Just a little about my pacemarker journey (to give some context). I am a 22 year old college student and I have had a pacemaker since I was 7 months old. I was born with a large hole in ny heart and when they were repairing it they completely severed my AV node, giving me bradycardia. I have had a pacemaker ever since. 

So in my lastest check up my cardiologist noticed a suspicious episode of tachycardia after reviewing it he confirmed that I do indeed have tachycardia (i don't believe that it is pacemaker mediated but honestlyi was a bit overwhelmedwhen he was explainingeverything to me). He put me on a daily asprin to try and reduce my clotting (to prevent stroke - and because I am on birth control) And explained that I should probably have an ablation surgery to prevent stroke as well. Has anyone had one of these done? What is the recovery like?

In some of my more recent episodes of tachy my symptoms have been getting worse. Does this mean anything? The scariest recent development is now they have started giving me chest pain. Should I be worried or is this normal? My cardiologist didn't really warn me to much about what to look for and expect so I don't want to freak out over nothing but it certainly has me startled.

Any knowledge or advice would be greatly appreciated. I have been trying to read up on it and looking through the forms here but some of it just goes over my head.

2 Comments

Tachycardia

by TAC - 2022-03-14 13:06:38

You probably have supra-ventricular tachycardia episodes that are not related to your PM. Ablation is an option that has a high posibility of success. Your chest pains are probably related to your arrhythmia, since you're too young to think of coronary heart disease. Supraventricular tachycatdia is not considered a dangerous arrhythmia but certainly it makes you feel very uncomfortable. If I were you, I would go for the ablation. You're too young to be placed on life-long anti-arrythmic and anti-coagulant medications.

Ablation?

by AgentX86 - 2022-03-14 17:19:18

I'd guess that a third of us here have had an ablation.  I've had three, unfortunatly none successful. Of course there is are risks to any surgery but ablation isn't particularly risky. I thought they were a walk in the park, in fact. For two of mine, I only had a local anesthetic.  For the third I had some sedative but was still awake.

Tachycardia just means a faster than normal (>100bpm) heart rate.  The trick is to find the exact cause. Then there are several things they can do but your pacemaket won't help (and if it is PMT, it's the problem). One important thing it can do is to put a floor on your heart rate so that powerful antiarrhythmics can be tried.

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