Is my abnormal heart rhythm dangerous?

hi guys my name is Sanjay Gupta I'm a consultant cardiologist in New York today I wanted to talk to you about heart rhythm disturbances and in particular I wanted to try and explain what is it that makes a heart rhythm disturbance dangerous because by far in a way the thing that scares everyone is that heart rhythm disturbances can be dangerous and the problem is compounded by the fact that there are so many different types of heart rhythm disturbances they all have horrible names and very difficult names and there's a lot of jargon and no one really knows you know is this dangerous is you know you have PBC's pa C's atrial tachycardia atrial flutter atrial fibrillation SVT ventricular tachycardia non sustained ventricular tachycardia and wherever you look you know this could be dangerous this could be dangerous this could be dangerous so I thought I would try and explain it in a way that is easy to understand and try and break it down into basics to help you understand what the relevance of any heart rhythm disturbances and what is it that makes that heart rhythm disturbance dangerous okay so the first thing to understand is that the only relevance of any heart rhythm disturbance any heart rhythm disturbance the thing that a heart rhythm disturbance indicates is that for the duration of that rhythm disturbance the heart is not working as efficiently as it should it's as simple as that that's all it means so the heart is a pump and the role of this pump is to pump oxygen rich blood around to our vital organs and of course if the heart becomes inefficient then it will pump less blood around to our vital organs and of course if there is a prolonged if that is very inefficient and there is a pure prolonged duration of inefficiency then you could cause damage you could cause damage to our vital organs you could damage your heart as well because our heart is one of those vital organs so the first thing to understand is that that's all the relevance of any heart rhythm disturbances the second thing then to say is well what is it you know that makes the heart room what is what is it about the heart rhythm disturbance which tells you how inefficient that heart rhythm disturbances and the truth is this that the first thing to understand is that for a heart rhythm disturbance to be dangerous to cause you damage it has to be sustained it has to go on for a certain duration of time because if it is very transient it is not going to be enough to cause damage okay remember what do we do with our lungs our lungs are responsible for getting oxygen in and they oxygenate our blood and the blood curves round so if our lungs aren't working for example then you would have the same problem you would get less oxygen in and you could cause damage but we all know that you have to go a certain duration of time without oxygen to cause damage the transient transient inefficiencies such as for example when we swim we hold our breath we don't do ourselves any damage by that it has to go on for a prolonged period of time to cause damage so the first thing to understand is that long sustained rhythm disturbances rhythm disturbances that don't go on for a prolonged period of time for more than 30 seconds are not going to be dangerous all right so if you have a topics those by definition are not going to cause you any damage because they are so transit you know you're just being inefficient for that one beat and then it's followed by a normal beat so in any non sustained heart rhythm disturbance is by definition not going to cause you any damage and this also applies for things like n SVT non sustain ventricular tachycardia it is long sustained because it is non sustained the inefficiency is not sustained and therefore will not cause you any damage so the first thing is non sustained rhythms do not cause us any damage sustained rhythms sustained inefficiency is more interesting alright and the duration of the sustained inefficient is very interesting so if you have sustained an efficiency for an hour that is not going to be as dangerous to us as they sustained in efficiency for three days so that's the second thing to understand the third thing to understand is the heart rate is important because the faster the heart rate during the rhythm disturbance the more inefficient the heart why because the heart needs a certain amount of time to fill with blood and if the heart is going very fast it's not getting the time to fill with blood and therefore less blood is coming out just because the heart is fast couple that with the inefficiency of a heart rhythm disturbance makes it more interesting so someone who has uh let's say ventricular tachycardia at 110 beats per minute is not going to be in danger compared to someone who has been tricular tachycardia at 200 beats per minute because aid they have the inefficiency from their rhythm disturbance be the fast heart rate compounds that inefficiency the third thing that has an impact on our inefficiency is where the rhythm arises from okay so atrial rhythms generally pump more blood out of the heart compared to ventricular rhythms so that is why atrial tachycardia is not as inefficient and is so much better tolerated than ventricular tachycardia because by very nature if it's just a ventricle that's pumping the blood out you're only getting the ventricular bit pushing the blood out the ventricle is doing that work if you have it actual rhythm the atria is pushing blood into the ventricle and helping the ventricle push the blood out so your ventricle is filling with more blood because the atria is pumping into the ventricle and that's pushing the blood out so you're getting more blood out so that is why a true rhythms are less inefficient compared to ventricular rhythms and finally the most important thing is do you have a heart which is already inefficient to start off with before you develop the rhythm disturbance so if you have a damaged heart if you have a heart that is only working at 20% you then add in a sustained heart rhythm disturbance which goes on for several hours which is ventricular which is really fast there we're talking about a dangerous rhythm but otherwise if you have a non sustained rhythm it's not dangerous if you have a rhythm which is a true Oh as opposed to ventricular it's not going to be as dangerous if you have a rhythm which goes slow smoking it so going at 130 beats per minute that's not going to be as dangerous as a rhythm that is going to get 200 beats per minute and finally if you have a structurally normal heart then because the heart is strong whatever inefficiency is happening because of the rhythm disturbance at least the heart is a strong structure and therefore does pump some blood out yes it won't pump out as much because of the inefficiency from the rhythm but it's still able to pump something else if the heart is already weak and on top of that you add and be an efficiency then the heart is going to pump out a lot less and that inefficiency is dangerous so when people contact me and say oh I've got two topics are they dangerous of course they're not interesting I have non sustained VT is that dangerous no it's not dangerous at all because non sustained VT is non sustained the inefficiency is not sustained it is not going to do us any harm sustained rhythms which are ventricular which are very fast which are on the background of an already damaged heart those are the rhythms that are dangerous so I hope this helps you understand what makes a heart rhythm dangerous and it makes you realize that actually you know you have to have a lot of things that a lot of bad things for a heart rhythm disturbance to be dangerous as opposed to just the ORAC topic here or a little run of non sustained PT or something like that so I hope this was helpful I would love to hear what you thought of this video and I hope this makes sense and if I can do things better please let me know other than that I'm really grateful to it for everything you do I'm sorry I haven't put a video out for a while but I will do another one and I think my next one is going to be on Parkinson white syndrome so thank you so much and all the best take

Channel: York Cardiology

Views: 116,166

Keywords: Heart palpitations anxiety, Heart palpitations after eating, Heart palpitations causes, Heart palpitations symptoms, Heart palpitations treatment, Heart palpitations cure, Ventricular ectopics, Heart disease symptoms, Heart racing, Heart flutter causes, Heart palpitations at night, arrhythmia, NSVT, Vtach, ventricular tachycardia, dangerous heart rhythm, cardiac arrest

Id: eJQUp8Bbyo4

Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019