What are the symptoms of heart palpitations?
Heart palpitations is the awareness of the heart beating. Normally, one does not feel the heart beat, but in certain situations one becomes aware of the heart beating against the chest.
Heart palpitation symptoms can be felt in the chest, neck or throat. They can feel like the heart is:
1.Skipping beats
2.Beating too fast
3.Fluttering
4.Pumping harder than usual.
Heart palpitations can occur in different situations, when one is active, at rest, lying down, standing or seating. They do not last long, usually only few minutes and then disappear. But, in case they last longer than that, in case of worsening palpitation or if having prior heart disease, talking to the doctor is very important.
How to distinguish from other heart rhythm disorders?
Heart palpitations can be caused by the following situations:
1.Exerciese
2.Emotions, such as anxiety, fear, excitement, panic
3.Pregnancy
4.Caffeine found in coffee, tea, drinks, chocolate etc.
5.Some medical conditions such as hyperthyroidism, fever, anemia, dehydration etc.
6.Drugs such as cocaine or heroine
7.Nicotine found in tobacco products.
8. Heart rhythm disorders ( atrial fibrillation, wolf-Parkinson syndrome, sick sinus syndrome, sinus arrhythmia, atriall flutter etc).
It is very important to make the differential diagnosis between heart palpitation symptoms because of benign causes (causes from point 1 to 7) and heart rhythm disorders.
History of the patient that complains of having heart palpitation symptoms (Anamnesis in medical language) is very important. Sometimes, this is enough in diagnosing the cause of palpitations.
But, the most accurate test to distinguish “good” heart palpitations from heart arrhythmias is ECG. Not only it makes the difference between this two conditions, but also shows where in the heart exactly is the problem.
Different types of arrhythmias have different and specific patterns on the ECG strip.
So, the difference between heart palpitations and other heart arrhythmias can be perfectly done by having a simple ECG test.