What Is Arrhythmia?

An arrhythmia is an abnormal heart rate or rhythm. A heartbeat that is too fast (tachycardia), too slow (bradycardia) or irregular can interfere with your heart’s ability to pump blood. Irregular blood flow has a higher likelihood of forming clots, as may happen with atrial fibrillation (when rapid heartbeat allows blood to pool in the heart). Arrhythmias can also prevent blood from reaching the heart or the brain. This is why arrhythmias have an increased risk of stroke or heart attack.

Not all heart arrhythmias are symptomatic, but if you do have symptoms, they may include:

• "Fluttery" feeling in your heart, or feeling that your heart is “skipping” a beat
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Fainting or near-fainting Chest pain
• Abnormal sweating
• Shortness of breath
  
  

How We Treat Heart Arrhythmia at Memorial

An arrhythmia diagnosis can cause anxiety. We understand, and we treat hundreds of people each year for irregular heartbeats. At Memorial, we offer:

• Expert diagnosis: We diagnose arrhythmias using both noninvasive monitoring tests and minimally invasive tests that analyze your heart’s electrical activity. Before ordering a test, our heart rhythm specialists collaborate with the cardiac imaging and cardiac catheterization teams to determine the appropriate test for each patient.
• High-volume ablation center: A common treatment for arrhythmias is cardiac ablation. We perform radiofrequency ablation and cryoablation. Radiofrequency ablation uses heat to safely destroy the heart tissue causing the irregular rhythm. Cryoablation has the same function, but uses cold instead of heat. As a high-volume program, we do more than 700 cardiac ablations each year, which gives us significant expertise.
• Sophisticated electrophysiology suites: Electrophysiology is the branch of cardiology that focuses on the heart’s electrical activity. We have three suites dedicated to electrophysiology procedures equipped with the latest tools to treat patients with arrhythmias. For example, using 3-D mapping technology, we can pinpoint an arrhythmia’s location.
• Implantable devices: For life-threatening arrhythmias that can’t be treated with medicine or ablation, we may implant a pacemaker to correct a slow heartbeat, or an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) to correct a fast or irregular heartbeat.
• Team approach to care: Our team is here to serve you, whether you have an arrhythmia or a related coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathy, heart failure or congenital heart condition. All of our heart and vascular specialists work together for the patient’s benefit. We call this approach TotalHeart: one center with multiple specialists and treatment options.