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Dr. Su describes the symptoms of supraventricular tachycardia/SVT.
Dr. Su:
The symptoms of supraventricular tachycardia, or fast heart rhythm, actually can be very, very variable. We have pediatric population that will go through their parents and say, “Mommy, my heart is racing away” or “Mommy, I am short of breath.”
Well, often that gets even written off as anxiety by pediatricians until someone even reaches their teenage years when often when I see them. Of course, that still gets written off as anxiety and there’s somebody who said, “Well, maybe we’ll try to document it.” Then they find, “Gosh, their heart rate goes to 180-200 beats per minute.” Then they decide it, “Well, that’s little bit abnormal. We should look into that.”
And they look back, they may be even treated with anti-anxiety medication for a decade before that gets cured. And so that may present as palpitation, shortness of breath, but sometimes even completely asymptomatic, meaning that some people are not aware of the fast heart rhythm, fast heart beat, and they become just more short of breath. And sometimes they don’t come in to us until the heart has completely gone into heart failure, and the heart muscle has really just tired out, an entity what’s called tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy.
Well it’s a long-term, basically all that is saying that is that the heart muscle is really tired out from beating so fast and cannot keep up with the overall heart demand and the body demand. So the first presentation is congestive heart failure.
Dr. Su, M.D., F.A.C.C.:
Dr. Wilber Su is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Cardiac Electrophysiology, and is on staff at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital, St. Joseph Hospital, Maricopa County Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Center, and Banner Desert Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree with honors in biomedical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and attended medical school at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He also trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology. He is involved in ongoing studies on national trials to improve complex arrhythmia treatments and mentors electrophysiologists across the country on complex ablations and cardiac device implantation techniques. Dr. Su specializes in atrial fibrillation ablation, arrhythmia ablations, Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators (ICD) among other heart conditions and procedures.
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