should I be worried? any nurses/medical people about?

[Heartbeat4]

Hi,

was recently in a&e for something unrelated where they picked up episodes of very high heart rates. I’ve had episodes of tachycardia before but usually just ignore it so it’s not a new thing but this was particularly bad. It was 177 at its highest but usually ranged between 140-170. We tried a heart trace soo many times but for some reason there was too many artefacts. We even tried different machines but they said they couldn’t get any useful scans even though I wasn’t moving at all. Long sorry short I’ve got a referral to cardiology which will probably be in a few weeks time

just wondered though, I know some people naturally have fast heart rates and that’s ok, how fast could you class as this? Would 177 be something to worry about or could that still come under the ‘high but not awful/normal for the person’ catagory? Or would that heart rate cause alarm?

just wondered as I genuinely don’t know whether I should be worried about it or not! Some of the nurses were clearly really worried by it but others weren’t so it’s hard to know how bad (relatively speaking) it is

I didn’t have to go to resus or anything like that so I’m presuming it can’t be that bad but just wondered how fast would you class as being ok (if that makes sense)

thanks!

Did they not do any investigation?! If your hr is 170 when you are at rest I would be seeing a Dr today.

What is it now?

Did they check you for overactive thyroid?

I have experience of similar v high hr

Did they mention svt?

Also, just to add, they said it might be SVT although that wouldn’t fit with it bouncing between 140-177, but the valsalva manoever helped so they said it might be SVT. And I was absolutely drenched in sweat when it was 177 (literally soaked through my clothes and the bed sheets, it was awful, but not particularly painful just unpleasant IYSWIM. They said the heart tracings were all rubbish because of artefacts but from the little parts they could see they could rule out dangerous arythmias from the parts, and they said it just looked like my heart was normal so no SVT just beating really quickly, but then they also said they might be missing SVT in the artefact areas. They advised an IV medication to kick my heart back to normal but it was too frightened of it stopping my heart so we persevered with the valsalva which seemed to being it down to 120 which they were happy with x

Aaaand just to complicate things more, some staff said it might be high from stress or nerves but then others said 177 was way too high for it to be just down to that. Ahh so confusing, just need to wait for cardiology but just curious in the meantime x

Yeah they did full bloods, and then did a few different heart traces and ecgs and stuff, im not sure what it is right at this moment but when I was discharged it was around 160 x

I’m a doctor. That is really high and I am glad that there is a plan for you to see a cardiologist.
the cardiologist will have triaged the referral and they will be seeing you in what they consider a safe time frame. If you feel unwell you should contact your GP straight way and mention your cardiac issue.

You were discharged from hospital with a HR of 160. That is definitely not ok, im shocked by that. Were you in a cardiology ward?

Thanks, oh yeah sorry I didn’t mean to insinuate I shouldn’t have been discharged or anything like that, I was more than happy to be discharged because I wasn’t in agony and it had been 140-177 for 24 hours so it wasn’t a sudden change,all the drs and nurses were so helpful! 😊 I just wasn’t sure, is that too high to be caused purely by stress or nerves? Some staff just about freaked out when they saw it and said it was far too high for that and others said if it’s not SVT then it might just be nerves and they weren’t worried. I don’t think I was nervous but maybe subconsciously I guess, and I wasn’t walking about or anything when it was high- I had been lieing on the bed for hours. Thanks for the help! x

it was in an a&e ward, It was 140 ish the 2nd last time they checked it (maybe 4 hours before it or something like that) then they checked it again just before I was discharged and it was back to 160 but I’m assuming it was ok because it wasn’t a sudden change and it was bouncing between 140-177 for the last 24 hours beforehand and there wasn’t any dangerous arythmias on the parts of the ecg they could see x

just a quick bump in case anyone else has any knowledge or experience x