Supraventricular Tachycardia or SVT: In this PACE CARDIOLOGY video, Dr. Yaariv Khaykin explains Supraventricular Tachycardia or SVT .[SUBTITLES]
I can i’m a cardiac electrophysiologist at south lake regional health center and pace cardio i wanted to talk to you about super ventricular tachycardia and what we can offer patients who suffer from this condition as you know in your heart there are four chambers two on top and two on the bottom heart beat starts on the right upper chamber in an area called the
Sinus node it’s your own pacemaker you born with it generates impulses which activate the upper chambers of your heart to pump blood onto the bottom chambers through the specialized conduction system called the av node the born chambers get activated to pump blood into the lungs and throughout the body now most patients are born was just a single connection between
Upper and lower chambers in the av node some patients have a second connection eyes are called a slow pathway or an accessory pathway slow pathway typically means doubling of the av node where instead of having one normal wire conducting electricity from upper to lower chambers the patient has – an accessory pathway on the other hand is a muscle fiber that conducts
Electricity from top chambers to the bottom chambers somewhere in the break and the insulation around either the mitral or the tricuspid valve these are the valves between the upper and lower chambers of the heart in either case the patient may develop abnormal short circuit where electricity flows down from the upper chambers to the bottom chambers typically
Through the av node and then goes back up to the upper chambers either using the slow pathway or the accessory pathway patients with these conditions typically present with palpitations rapid regular beating of the heart which starts right suddenly stops suddenly may stop when the patient bears down holds their breath applies pressure to you know the rise which
Is certainly not something we would recommend you doing or to their neck we have a number of medications which may help by slowing conduction through the av node these are beta blockers or calcium channel blockers however they’re not foolproof and while the patient typically has arrhythmia only some of the time these medications can make you feel tired and slow
Down your heartbeat all of the time anti-arrhythmic medications like flecainide and propafenone are sometimes indicated for patients with an accessory pathway or the wpw wolff-parkinson-white syndrome but again these medications have a number of potential side effects as an alternative we can ablate the abnormal pathway or cauterize it patients with this condition
Present to the electrophysiology laboratory which we have at south lake regional health center under sedation sometimes anesthesia will place local anesthetic around the veins and arteries in the groin and put catheters using intravenous approach without any cutting or stitching the catheters are placed in the heart these are thin wires with electrodes on the tip we
Use the catheters to both map the electrical activation of the heart find the short circuit and then get rid of it some of these patients require rapid pacing of the heart to find the short circuit some may require administration of very important medications like adrenaline which make you feel like you had a strong starbucks coffee to cause or potentiate causing
The arrhythmia on the table what do you need to be able to find the short circuit in order to get rid of it once we find the short circuit electrical energy is applied to the short circuit who is 98% success in getting rid of it and getting rid of the arrhythmia the procedure does have a few small potential side effects obviously there is a small risk of bleeding
Of the groin as we’re manipulating catheters in the heart there is an extremely small risk of bleeding around the heart risk of a heart attack stroke risk to life and a very small risk of needing a pacemaker if inadvertently the av node is this troit these risks are extremely small we’ll perform hundreds of these procedures and unlike most things in medicine
These procedures are effectively curative with an extremely small risk of arrhythmia recurrence in patients who suffer from these conditions the procedures take about an hour and patients typically leave within 4 hours
Transcribed from video
SUPRAVENTRICULAR TACHYCARDIA: PACE CARDIOLOGY [SUBTITLES] By PACE Cardiology