Bradycardia - what is it?

Bradycardia can be considered a normal phenomenon in athletes and indicates a well-trained body. But more often this condition accompanies various pathologies from the heart. So, bradycardia - what is it? This is a kind of arrhythmia, in which there is a slowdown in the frequency of heartbeats to 60 beats per minute. Failure of heart attacks in this case is associated with a disruption of the sinus node, the so-called pacemaker.

Causes of bradycardia

The following conditions can provoke a heart rhythm failure:

• Hypothyroidism - thyroid disease;

• Hypothermia - lower body temperature;

• Hyperkalemia is a disease characterized by an elevated potassium content in the blood;

• Hypercalcemia - excess of calcium in the blood;

• Increased intracranial pressure;

• Myocardial infarction;

• Exceeding the dose of drugs designed to eliminate heart failure;

• infectious diseases;

• Botkin's disease (jaundice);

• starvation;

• Atherosclerosis of the heart vessels;

• Postinfarction cardiosclerosis.

Bradycardia: what it is and what kinds it happens

Depending on the revealed disorders, the pathology is divided into sinus bradycardia, which is characterized by a slowed down work of the main pacemaker, and a bradycardia resulting from cardiac impulse failure (blockade) at various levels (between the atria and the ventricle or sinus node). The heart rhythm may be slowed down for a number of reasons, for example in athletes, in sleep or at rest. Such a bradycardia is called physiological. If the heart rate slows down with any disease, then this is a pathological bradycardia. It can be acute and self-disappear after the elimination of the disease that caused this deviation, or chronic - as a result of age-related heart disease.

Bradycardia: symptoms and treatment

Physiological bradycardia can not provoke a hemodynamic failure. With a delayed heart rate, there is a lack of blood supply and oxygen starvation of organs and tissues, this leads to a violation of their full functioning. If the heart rate decreases to 40 beats per minute, a person may feel dizzy, weak, or short of breath. He throws it into a cold sweat, maybe even fainting. This is because the heart is not able to pump blood in the necessary rhythm, the blood supply to the brain is broken, oxygen starvation occurs. During such fainting, the risk of sudden cardiac arrest increases .

Therapy

It should be very attentive to such a phenomenon as bradycardia. That this pathological condition, requiring consultation of an experienced specialist, should not cause any doubt. The sooner the doctor conducts the examination and performs all the necessary manipulations, the sooner the patient's condition returns to normal. Physiological and moderate bradycardia are not accompanied by clinical symptoms and do not need therapy. With a pathological form, it is necessary to treat the underlying disease. If there is a development of such diseases as angina pectoris, heart failure, arterial hypotension, gastric arrhythmia, it is necessary to take active actions to treat bradycardia. In particularly severe cases, it may be necessary to consult a cardiac surgeon and the possible implantation of an artificial heart rate driver that generates pulses with a physiological frequency.

After reading this article, you learned more about the disease, such as bradycardia: what it is, what are the symptoms and causes of this condition.