What are the Different Heartbeats?
A common cardiovascular disorder that is related to irregular heart rhythms is called Arrhythmias and it usually feels like a flutter or brief pause in your heart. That feeling occurs when the electrical impulse that keeps a steady heartbeat fluctuates, causing your heart to beat too fast, too slow or irregularly. A healthy adult heart rate ranges between 60 to 100 beats per minute. Therefore, a heartbeat less than 60 beats per minute is considered too slow and a heartbeat going over 100 beats per minute is a fast heartbeat.
The medical term for these two types of inconsistent heartbeat is called bradycardia for slow and tachycardia for fast. An irregular heartbeat which tends to happen at random is usually called a flutter, or in extreme cases, fibrillation. There are also early heartbeats where two beats happen one after another due to an early beat on the second one, disrupting the rhythm. This is called a premature heartbeat. Premature heartbeats have two types referring to the location of the beat: Premature Atrial Contractions, which are beats that start in the upper chamber of the heart called the Atria and Premature Ventricular Contractions, PVCs, found in the lower chamber of your heart. Atrial contractions are usually harmless and PVCs are common arrhythmias where it feels like your heart skipped a beat but are truly related to stress or too much caffeine, nicotine or electrolyte imbalance. Other atrial rhythmic disorders include Atrial flutter, which is more regular than an atrial fibrillation, a common irregular rhythm in the Atria. A flutter is often found in people with heart disease or occurs first week post-op of heart surgery.
In late heartbeats, tachycardia has four common types of disorders. Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia, PSVT, is a sudden rapid regular heartbeat that starts from the lower chambers of the heart called the ventricles. Accessory pathway causes tachycardia due to an extra pathway between the upper and lower chambers of the heart: the atria and ventricles. A pathway called the AV node has a separate name of AV nodal reentrant tachycardia. Ventricular tachycardia, most commonly known as V-tach, is the extreme rapid heart beating, so fast that the heart can’t fill up with enough blood. It's caused by abnormal electrical signals in the body causing out of sync beats with the upper chambers. V-tach can lead to death and requires a defibrillator to resolve.
Abnormal heartbeats are widely overlooked and end up causing serious damage, if not death to those who obtain them. Arrhythmia is a serious heart condition that should be seen by a doctor or may result in death during extreme conditions. A brief arrhythmia has almost no symptoms and feels as if you skipped a heartbeat or a flutter on your chest or nest. Severe irregular rhythms can pass as tiredness, lightheadedness or may cause you to pass out. Bradycardia causes fatigue, dizziness, faint spells, or in extreme cases, cardiac arrest. Tachycardia affects the heart’s ability to pump, causing shortness of breath, chest pain and faint; severe cases cause heart attacks or death.
Overall, there are numerous types of heart issues, including arrhythmias. It is important that even though a small fluctuation of your heart beat or unusual sensation may come off as nothing important, it is always a good idea to monitor yourself and go to the doctor when needed.
References:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-arrhythmia/symptoms-causes/syc-20350668
