The feeling of a sinking heart is a poetic symptom that is often found in people of different ages. Arrhythmias, periodic loss of contractions and subsequent palpitations are typical signs of cardiac pathology. The appearance of disorders is often associated with emotional and physical stress, age, gender, and the presence of chronic diseases. The clinical picture of arrhythmias is nonspecific, most patients complain of subjective feelings of fading or interruptions in the work of the heart.
What is heart stopping?
Heart sinking is a subjective sensation in a patient that perceived as a missed next myocardial contraction. Most often, this symptom develops in patients with emotional lability, hypochondria and vegetative-vascular pathology, who physically feel the heart rate. The ability to independently feel the contractions of the heart muscle is also formed in people with long-term persistent cardiac disease.
Normally, the myocardium contracts at a frequency of 60 to 90 per minute in the correct rhythm, which originates in the sinus node of the right atrium and is carried along nerve fibers to the ventricles. The frequency and strength of contractions varies in each person during the day, depending on the environmental conditions. The appearance of extraordinary impulses (up to 300 per day) is considered a physiological norm, which a healthy person does not feel.
The development of a feeling of sinking heart in patients is associated with:
- loss of the next reduction;
- a long pause between impulses (against the background of a slow rhythm);
- weakened heart rate.
Patients describe this condition as "immersion", "prolapse", "short cardiac arrest and time-lapse", "sudden weakness", "the heart works intermittently."
What symptoms are associated with this sensation?
In medicine, there are more than 200 types of various rhythm disturbances, which in patients are most often found in combinations. Specific differences on the electrocardiogram and absolutely nonspecific clinical signs are considered a feature of arrhythmias.
When patients talk about heart sinking, most often they are talking about:
- irregular contraction of the ventricular and atrial myocardium, which is felt as two independent rhythms;
- the presence of frequent extraordinary contractions, after which a compensatory pause occurs;
- irregular rhythm (different intervals between contractions).
From an objective point of view, fading can be called a pause in the heart rhythm lasting up to 2 seconds, after which tachycardia develops (cardiopalmus).
What are the reasons for this condition?
Symptoms of cardiac arrest develop due to two main mechanisms: cardiac (true arrhythmia) and psychogenic (subjective opinion of the patient against the background of excitement or anxiety).
The most common causes of cardiac arrest include:
- atrial fibrillation (atrial fibrillation) - the presence of many ectopic foci of excitation, in which there is no adequate contraction of the atria ("convulsive twitching") and the ventricular rhythm is maintained;
- atrioventricular block - violation of the conduction of an electrical impulse. 2 degree of disorder is accompanied by extraordinary loss of contractions, which are felt as "missed";
- extrasystole is a pathology with the appearance of extraordinary contractions of the myocardium. After such an impulse, to restore the electrical activity of cardiomyocytes, a compensatory pause develops, during which a feeling of fading occurs;
- the climacteric period in women, which is characterized by the instability of the hormonal background, metabolic imbalance and various sensations in different areas of the body;
- vegetative-vascular dystonia (VVD) of the cardiac type is often accompanied by subjective pain or squeezing in the chest, rhythm disturbances and interruptions in the work of the heart.
Osteochondrosis also refers to the possible causes of subjective sensations in the heart. Compression of the intercostal nerves by the overgrown osteophytes from the vertebral bodies irritates the sympathetic fibers that innervate the structures of the myocardium. This condition affects both the heart rate and the patient's sensations.
How to stop an attack and what to do next?
The patient's algorithm of actions in case of freezing in the chest area is associated with the cause of the onset of symptoms. The presence of organic cardiac pathology requires the appointment of constant pathogenetic or etiotropic therapy.
In the case of a psychogenic genesis of sensations, it is recommended:
avoid stressful situations;
- normalize sleep and wakefulness;
- rational nutrition, enriched with vitamins and microelements (for the heart - potassium, which is contained in bananas and dried fruits);
- adequate physical activity;
- taking plant-based sedatives (eg Novo-Passit, Valerian extract).
Rare symptoms (up to 3 times a month) are most often a physiological phenomenon that occurs in every person. Fading, which is repeated several times a day and lasts up to 4 seconds, requires diagnosis and medical attention.
Depending on the reason, they are prescribed:
- with a rare sinus rhythm and hemodynamically significant atrioventricular block of a high degree, a pacemaker is used. Before installing an artificial pacemaker, Zelenin, Atropine, Izadrin drops are prescribed;
- treatment of extrasystoles is carried out with antiarrhythmic drugs, for example, Etacizin;
- attacks against the background of vegetative-vascular dystonia are stopped with the help of sedatives and antispasmodic drugs.
In addition, physiotherapy methods are successfully used to treat subjective sensations of rhythm disturbances: massage, balneotherapy and others.
Conclusions
Rhythm disturbances are one of the characteristic signs of organic damage to the heart muscle. Detailed diagnostics allows assessing the state of the conducting system and choosing an adequate therapy. The relief of arrhythmia attacks is prescribed depending on the form of violations. Psychogenic genesis of sensations is a diagnosis of exclusion, for which therapy is carried out mainly by non-drug means.
