Heart Rhythm Conditions – Welcome to the group

I have atrial tachycardia post ablation for SVT and sometimes I feel mildly short of breath but other times no. I wanted to start a beta blocker but I exercise a lot and it has given me a low heart rate sometimes in the 30’s with sleep shown on holter monitor. Hope you feel better on the new med.

Hi guys, my name is Bill. I’m 45 years young and live on the gulf coast. So here’s my story of how I have came across this group. I’ve been dealing with extreme breathing issues for almost 3 years now. I kept saying it was my heart and everybody kept saying my heart was fine. I’ve had two echocardiograms done, two stress test, and an angiogram. All those tests are coming back good. Then I wore a heart monitor. The doctor was able to see that my upper chamber was beating faster than normal. They are saying I have atrial tachycardia. Now could this be the reason I’m dealing with shortness of breath. I was put on a medication called Nebivolol. Tonight will be the first night I take the medication. Has anybody else dealt with this, and if so, did they also have shortness of breath?

Hi I am what they call a lively 78 year old. I have read many of your posts and find them very positive and helpful. I hope someone in the group is a bit similar to me. I have afib which started 3.5 years ago after a strenuous hike with friends. Everyone had left the remote parking lot and I realized I was probably having an MI. I was a nurse; it was the famous LAD. I was 'fine", but aflutter, then afib showed up over the next 6 mos. I was 24% afib when I was rxed in 10/23. EF 72%,etc. Cardiologists kept saying do you have symptoms? I was puzzled. I did not have palpitations, pain, tiredness, sob. ALL the cardiologists said "well, do what you do; exercise is good; you seem to feel well." Since I was a lifetime athlete, I knew how to be careful not to overexert now that I had a "condition". I listened to my HR, I slowed down....did many of the same things slower. I even climbed a tall peak last year on my first trip outa the country in years. Then BOOM, in Feb, I had chest complete fullness, left side jabby pain, palpitations for about 3 days. I then began to realize none of the cardiologists had mentioned my enlarged left atrium... 51ml in 10/23. 60 ml now. I began to research. I went to CClinic. I was thinking Convergent. Wadsni said no ablation. Soltesz said COX 4 surgery is the only real treatment that will allow enough visualization to lay down good bilateral lesion sets and actually get at an enlarged left atrium to clamp off the appendage.
I have put a lot of "research time" into WHERE the dysfunctional cells are that cause the arrhythmias...and therefore, why some procedures may work for one person, but not for another. That, combined with each individual's total heart function. At present I have gone from 72% ef to 60% ef in 4 mos, often feel 8 month's pregnant. I walk an hour a day on flat ground.

In my case, it is both the afib and the Left Atrium size that create a reduced timeframe of good function. My great LV squeeze can't keep up with the bucket of workload in the LA forever.

Anyone else here had a standalone Cox 4? Barnes Jewish actually has a vast data set and the greatest number of these procedures done in the USA. Their 'success" rates are fairly good: 80%ish.
I will say...I have had to face 3 cardiologists here in too ruralworld who wanted to do a cardioversion 5 mins after meeting me AFTER the LA was 60ml. That is 0 successful.

Another kept me on med rate control when - at 24% afib and 50mlLA - I MIGHT have had a successful ablation or cardioversion.

And another said he disagreed with a COx4 b/c he believed in "doing no harm". ????
He had no suggestions of how I SHOULD proceed and did not seem to be aware of the harm being caused by not addressing the LA.

My hope for everyone with a cardiac arrhymia is that you CONSIDER a couple of ideas from different practioners and educate yourself in how to read an ECHO, maybe do at least a 3 day holter...and basically try to understand what all those numbers mean yourself.

Thanks for reading this long winded piece. Any other enlarged left atriums out there?

@rjeggo Unfortunately, yes. It can be part of 'post-COVID' or part of the wide spectrum of 'long-COVID', but the vaccines have also come under increasing scrutiny and it's not looking great.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11886-023-01921-7
A study that counters the foregoing somewhat:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article
Yet another study indicating there seems to be a strong post-vaccine association:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1762082/abstract

@faithb I am also new to this. Everyone is different. I am in an evaluation for autonomic disorders. There seems to be a link between my events and stress. The stress I feel and my reaction to it isn’t really me and seems more physical than emotional. But it seems very important to keep the stress in check to prevent a snowball effect. More sleep helps and so do simple things like getting in the shower or tub or being in nature. These things get me out of my head and into a better state. Hope you feel better soon.

Hi my name is Richard and I have A F
This has been so for a couple of years
I had two surgical procedures 2022 and all was fine know I have this irregular heart beat, is there any connection to covid / vaccinations?
Cheers Richard

@faithb Faith, see my posts about my experiences with severe SVT over the last six months. I am 100% in touch with what you're going through. I saw the specialists (cardiologist, electrophysiologist), did what needed to be done. Spoiler: my 6-month journey has a really happy ending. Yours can too!

@faithb It depends on whether your nutrition is sufficient or maybe an endocrine problem. It is said in some sources that few modern citizens in the western world get sufficient magnesium these days, but only an RBC test will be definitive. Meanwhile, healthy kidneys will dump modest excesses over what their hosts can use, so often cited is a figure of supplementing up to 400 mg daily, which is not normally problematic. For most people.

I'm nothing close to educated on tachyarrhythmias, but I would think that PACs or AF might be much more common for electrolyte deficiencies....but it is also linked to SVT:
https://academic.oup.com/ehjcvp/article/3/2/108/2669829
I hope this won't sound patronizing or lecturing....don't mean it that way: your worst problem right now is the anxiety. You HAVE TO find a way to quell it. Your heart may or may not be permanently electrically disordered...only time will tell. If it's a temporary concern easily diagnosed and corrected, great! It will soon be history and you'll have learned something. If it's a journey toward other arrhythmias, or just more frequent PACs and it's incremental 'burden', then you might be further ahead to consult an electrophysiologist (EP) soon and get in line for an ablation. Ablating SVT has a pretty good record of success, albeit with variance between EPs, their training and experience.

New here. My name is Faith. 49 yo mother of two boys. Work in medical field. Had to call 911 yesterday because I had an SVT episode and I panicked. I think I get an anxiety attack on top of the SVT episode which makes it worse. I’m concerned because it’s beginning to be more frequent. Now a day after it happened I am paralyzed in fear that it will happen again. And tired because I had to take a Xanax. Does anyone know if magnesium helps these episodes or bothers them. I’m new to educating myself on this diagnoses. Any info is appreciated.

I would wake up at 2:30 in the morning with what felt like an electrical circuit racing around my heart. It would go away once I was up. I went to the ER at the local hospital and they would check me out and not see anything. I wore a Holter monitor and nothing. I read one of the posts here that described perfectly what I was going through and that was the vagus nerve acting up. Now, I take a deep breath into my abdomen and hold it and the symptoms fade away and I go back to sleep.