Permanent ectopy

I have what seems like permanent PACs (supraventricular ectopy)
I am getting a premature beat every third beat.
Plus every now and then, afib.
Is this common, is it treatable, is it dangerous?

Link to my ECG [www.mediafire.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2022 02:04PM by colindo.

What you're experiencing is PACs in a trigeminal pattern. Trigeminal means ectopic beats in a pattern of threes. There is also bigeminal and quadrigeminal (patterns of 2 and 4). It's not uncommon and it's not dangerous. It is, however, highly annoying, as I'm sure you've discovered. I lived with bigeminal PACs for months. The one positive thing I observed was that after a few weeks your brain begins to not notice them so much, so if this keeps up indefinitely you might find some relief just from that.

All you're dealing with is PACs, so all the usual advice on dealing with them applies. You can talk to your cardiologist about antiarrhythmic drugs that can suppress them, and you can try the wealth of other methods people have posted about here over the years.

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Carey
What you're experiencing is PACs in a trigeminal pattern. Trigeminal means ectopic beats in a pattern of threes. There is also bigeminal and quadrigeminal (patterns of 2 and 4). It's not uncommon and it's not dangerous. It is, however, highly annoying, as I'm sure you've discovered. I lived with bigeminal PACs for months. The one positive thing I observed was that after a few weeks your brain begins to not notice them so much, so if this keeps up indefinitely you might find some relief just from that.

All you're dealing with is PACs, so all the usual advice on dealing with them applies. You can talk to your cardiologist about antiarrhythmic drugs that can suppress them, and you can try the wealth of other methods people have posted about here over the years.

Not just PACs plus about 10 afib events this month that I can detect.
Did your ablation cure them or do you still get them?

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colindo
Not just PACs plus about 10 afib events this month that I can detect.
Did your ablation cure them or do you still get them?

My final ablation in 2017 ended afib and PACs entirely, but that was ablation #6 and it was quite extensive. The previous 5 left me with all the sorts of crap you're dealing with now.

How long do these afib episodes last? Are these just brief blips on a Kardia or actual episodes lasting minutes or hours?

Some afib episodes are 5 minute spikes, some last 30 minutes, but mostly 2 to 4 hours, although Tuesday was a bad day having 3 episodes, one was 6 hours (1am to 7am) another 1 hr and a third for 30 minutes. There are some blips which I can see on my fitbit which I don't count.

I would no Q. get on the path to an Ablation + judging by the amount of posts you have here on this site you know where to go for that or at least know the right questions to ask of the local Ep's in your area.
After my successful ablation in nov. 2018 i have exper. daily many pac's myself ranging from a few dozen to the type of freq. you are getting now.
In mid Feb. of this year i saw some incred. reviews on Amazon from a mag. product called.....natural rhythm triple calm.....it is a combo of 3 dif. mag....taurate, glycinate + malate. Now at first i was not sold mainly because before + after my Ablation i have tried every Mag. known to mankind + in dif. doses for 10 years with some yes improvement but no game changer but i decided to give this product a try after the reviews many exactly about pac's themselves. Within 24 hours i went from around 20K at least pac's a day down to about 2K (based on pulse taking per minute then extending that out per hour x24).....within 3 days i was down to a few hundred + within about 7-10 days it was only a few a day if that. It was a miracle...the gamechanger i was looking for. It even stopped my every night series of pac's i used to call my mini afib attacks i got for the last 10 years when i 1st went to bed when i moved on my left side then after my Ablation my right side was the trigger for a 30 second or so run then they would normally stop....although before nov. 2018 many times that sent me off to the races on a full blown afib ep. that i got about a dozen times a month lasting many hours to days before i started chewing my 1x 150mg PROPAFENONE pill instead of swallowing 2x 150mg + that cut the episodes down to about an hour each...that was a game changer in itself but just a bandaid before i got my HOPEFULLY perm. relief in 2018 from the ablation. Anyway sorry for the rambling on my afib history. I was wondering after this amazing pac daily change was it the Natural Rhythm product itself or was it simply the COMBINATION of the 3 mag. taken together that did it.....so what i did was after 2.5 months of taking Natural Rhythm....on my next Vitacost order i got the 3 mags ind. to put that to the test + i have stayed pretty much pac free when taking the 3 mag. products all at once 2x a day at reduced doses to = 1.5x the recommended dose total (1/4 of each x3....x2 times a day) while stopping the Natural Rhythm. The dif. is negl. although i would have to give Natural Rhythm the nod by a nose mainly because it made me sleep a little better + i do get a few more daily pac's with the ind. 3 combo compared to NR but both have done the job to the 99.99 %tile compared to my worst pac days.
About 90% of the time when i USED to get an afib ep. it was triggered by 1 or K's of pac's in a short period of time so i am wondering even now that if i was taking this combination before i had my Ablation could i have stayed out of afib or at least cut my ep. down 90% if i would have found this out years ago to stop that trigger. Well it is too late now but if i were you Colindo i would try this protocol of 3 mag. Combo but still get on the path to an Ablation...if it works really well on you like it did on me you can always post. or cancel the procedure for a later time if nes.

Anyway GL + let me/us know how you made out if you try this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2022 02:04PM by vanlith.

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vanlith

if i were you Colindo i would try this protocol of 3 mag. Combo but still get on the path to an Ablation...if it works really well on you like it did on me you can always post. or cancel the procedure

Thank you for your post. I will give what you suggest a go but would you explain exactly what you mean "i would try this protocol of 3 mag. Combo." ......i shop with iherb and need to know what to order.

Hi Colindo.....i ordered KAL TAURATE 400mg x90.....KAL MALATE 400mg x90 + i had already here liquid mag. glycinate for which 1 tablespoon is 300 mg. so choose what type of GLY. you want at Iherb. Each KAL tab is actually 200mg because the serving size is 2 tabs or 400mg so i break all the tabs in half for the eq. of 100mg each.....then take the half tab of both + 1/4 tablespoon of liquid GLY. in the morning + about an hour before bed. That is 150% of the rec. dose for the whole day....6x 25% of all doses = 150%. This is just me as we all know we are all different. Play around with the dosage yourself as i remember the Amazon reviews that many were ok with 1 pill of the Natural Rhythm + others needed 3 or 4. If you Iherb ind. combo you get does not do enough for you...... you can always try the Gold standard....Natural Rhythm....i still see these new mag i bought sep. myself as a trial knowing i can go back to NR if these fail me somewhat but so far so good.

Not sure who told you it was permanent. However, there have been several new studies that now feel that Etopic beats may not be so benign as once thought. Left untreated, the researchers are finding these can be precursors to afib and down the road cardiomyopathy. (depending on how many you have during a testing period ). One research article stated that anything over 100 a day is a concern. Mayo clinic recently published an article that these excessive beats can also lead to Dementia in older adults. If you have had AFIB in the past having PAC/PVC's can trigger it. That is what happened to me. I am taking medication to control frequency as much as possible and taking all the supplements mentioned. However, and Ablation may be in the future. Suggest you do some research to see what experts are now saying about these and choose a path. Here are a couple of articles to get you started.

Here is one article: [www.mayoclinicproceedings.org]
[www.ahajournals.org]

From the second article

Quote

The hazard ratio (HR) (95% confidence interval [CI]) associated with PVC was 1.77 (1.30, 2.41), attenuated to 1.25 (0.91, 1.71) after adjusting for baseline stroke risk factors.

Whenever the CI crosses 1.0, the result is not statistically significant.

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Peter Attia
For example, if the results showed “0.89, 95% CI (0.77-1.07),” it would be a negative association–in this case it would represent an 11% associated decrease (i.e., 1 – 0.89) in risk–though one that is not statistically significant because the CI crossed 1.00.

[peterattiamd.com]

Yes, PAC's can trigger afib. PVC's, not usually.

{edit} "The Mayo Clinic link does not work." must have been a server issue.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2022 08:15AM by GeorgeN.

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sldabrowski


Here is one article: [www.mayoclinicproceedings.org]

I did read that article when I started to get PACs.
Last week I went to the ED and tried to tell the Doctor that PACs every 3rd beat was stroke country. He said he had been a Doctor for 40 years and I was talking a lot of nonsense and they were harmless, go home and get use to them. Since then I have had afib every 2nd day and the current episode is 6 hours old.
Apart form a successful ablation what can be done.?

There are medications that can help you would need to try different ones to see what helps the most. Everyone is different. What helps one person, may not help another. And if you are in and out of Afib as you indicated, an anti-coagulant drug like Eliquis is the norm. I would also get another opinion. ASAP. There is new information and research coming out all the time about conditions and medications that were "harmless", finding out that is not necessarily the case. Some Docs just like their old ways. You are in charge of your health. Occasional etopic beats - every one gets them. When you get beyond the occasional, time to take action. Afib has a progression - the earlier it is treated the better the outcome.

I had successful afib ablation going on three years ago, but I still get some runs of ectopic beats, mostly in the afternoon. Not sure what these are (PVC vs PAC) quite honestly but they are annoying. I had PVC ablation four years ago, so they could be PAC or PVC. I personally try and stay hydrated and on bad days I take a 50 mg Fleccainide and 25 mg Metropolol. That's my regimen and my doctor is cool with it as needed. He isn't sure which of the two is doing the most good but I will use that mix until is stops working.

That said, you may be having so many ectopics that even a reduction will still not provide the relief you want. Get a holter monitor from your doctor and get a picture of what's going on. Stay the course and get a good cardiologist to fix things. It'll take time. An abaltion itself can lead to tons of ectopics for a long while during recovery (a year). My experince



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2022 04:25PM by keeferbdeefer.

Sorry to respond to this some weeks later, but I am a Nervous Nellie five days post-LPVCA. I'm having some nasty ectopic activity that has my head feeling a bit like that tingly, light-headed, fuzzy feeling that comes with too much sun. It always resolves, and I get good periods of calm, but a day later..... My EP leaned over me afterward and warned not to get down. He said only 5% of his fans report no further unwanted activity. The rest have some activity for weeks afterwards, and that the odds were rather good I'd be among them. So, I am a bit unsettled, but I am trying to be optimistic. I know that I have a 3/4 chance that it will be over inside of a couple of months, and that I won't need a touch-up.

Thanks for your observation and encouragement.

Usually after any ablation, the Docs keep you on some type of medication for a few months. Did he prescribe anything for you? If not, I would ask.