Did hospital make a mistake. Please help. Advice needed. .
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Hi
I am 38 and for about 6 years have had random episodes of waking out of sleep with my heart racing at 180-200 bpm, sweating, nausea and feeling like something is wrong. normally short lived (1-10 mins).
last night i had the same. woke 45 minutes after going to bed. heart racing at 190 ish. ten mins later was still around 180 another 15 and it was sat at 150. called 111 and ambulance was sent. took an hour to arrive and by then heart rate down yo 100.
After doing ecg they wanted to take me in heart shot up to 130 and stayed there. i put it down to leaving my husband and daughter at home and going into hospital.
in hospital Dr said she had never seen svt at 130 (normally higher) but i was in definitely in SVT and as it was now a few hours since it started suggested i needed Adenosine. I was pretty scared and asked if i had other options. she said we could wait but risked cardiac stress and possible cardiac arrest due to time it had been going on. equally scary. i ended up having two rounds of Adenosine which didn't work. preparing the third dose she had to go get advice and when she came back heart had slowed to 105. she said she had never seen that happen before. it usually happens immediately or not at all. left it a couple of hours and stayed at 100.
she came to discharge me and said the consultant said it might be rare type of SVT that is present at lower heart rate. but not dangerous because heart isn't fast so not causing any damage. That left me wondering why i had to have it done i the first place? i wont lie i found it pretty traumatic.
I'm so confused can anyone help me understand?
0 likes, 1 reply
thomas13016 charlie57121
Posted
I've suffered from SVT for a while now and your first description (waking up, sweating, heart racing) sounds exactly like an SVT episode. Most of my episodes are also short (a few seconds to a couple of minutes) but I have had three episodes that went over 30 minutes.
During my first long episode I also called 111 and they arranged for an ambulance to pick me up. I had a heart monitor on my mobile phone and recorded a bpm of 190. By the time the ambulance arrived my heart rate had dropped to just over 90 bpm. I was in my early forties at the time and physically very fit (normal resting heart rate of 60 bpm) so 90 was still quite high for me.
I had been given my covid vaccine only 24 hours prior to this episode and stories of side effects involving the heart were emerging all over the media. After reflecting on the experience I concluded that fear and anxiety had kept my heart rate higher than usual (I'd never been that scared before) but the SVT episode had ended.
The experience you described reminded me of my first long episode and I'm wondering if this might be the same for you. Could it be that your heart rate was still fast through anxiety after the SVT?
I didn't get an official SVT diagnosis until I had another long episode where I was only 20 minutes from a hospital. They caught heart rate at 240 bpm on an ECG machine and managed to bring my heart back to normal using vasagel maneuvers (if you haven't already tried these I can recommend them. They nearly always work for me).
Anyway, hope you're feeling better. Would love to know how you're managing your symptoms.