How do heart arrhythmias not kill you?

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I have PVCs and get them when exercising, bending over or when stressed and the cardiologist told me they’re completely benign. How? It’s the one thing keeping you alive.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The main function of your heart is to pump oxygenated blood towards the body for cellular work. As long as an arrhythmia doesn’t affect that work, then it’s benign.

Your ejection fraction (amount of oxygenated blood pumped out / total amount of oxygenated blood that enters the heart) is what’s important. If an arrhythmia affects the coordination of the pumping mechanism enough then that goes down and you’ll get symptoms of heart failure.

Another way an arrhythmia can fuck you up is by introducing changes to the hemodynamics of the blood inside your heart. Blood can never stop moving otherwise clotting mechanisms are kick started. If any amount of blood in your heart becomes the least bit non dynamic then you have a higher change of blood clot formation which could lead to strokes. As long as the arrhythmia is small enough that it doesn’t interfere with that fluid flow then it’s benign.

Lastly, another danger of arrhythmias is the possibility that they’ll propagate through the heart muscle and interfere with the main electrical current that powers the heart from the sinus node. As long as the abnormal electrical current is relatively isolated from that main circuitry then it’s benign.

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