The rhythm of life is a powerful beat

By Medical Expert Team

Sep 29 , 2016 | 2 min read

Imagine yourself sitting in a closed room on a comfortable couch listening to your favourite piece of music. Melody and harmony both are in perfect synchronization and suddenly you feel something going off the beat. Do you remember the feeling how your ears feel assaulted! This is exactly what happens when strings of the chord gets detached. Annoying and irritating…Sometimes shocking and hassled. The strings of a guitar need to be tuned from time to time to get the right sound, similarly it’s imperative to have a medical check-up done at regular intervals to ensure the heart is healthy and is in sync of the body.

But what if your own heart beat goes out of sync?

Our heartbeat starts as early as four weeks in foetal stages of life and goes on till the last breath. The same beat floods every cell of body with life-sustaining oxygen-rich blood, keeping us active and in control. When the heartbeat goes out of sync, it causes “Arrhythmia” (i.e. it beats too fast or too slow or too irregularly), leading to a chaos.

For instance, let us consider a musical instrument say a Guitar. If the chords are loose or broken you can never play the correct notes till the time you get it repaired or replaced. Moreover, if the guitar is played by an inexperienced person, it can convert music into noise.

Similarly, our heart consists of circuitry that produces the lovely music of life in the form of Heartbeat. If one chord breaks, it slows down the heart beat, leading to a Heart Block. If the wires are let loose, they cause ectopics, making the music of heart beat irregular. If the wiring has short circuit, it can cause Arrhythmia called as Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) or Ventricular Fibrillation (VF). The effect of Arrhythmia could range from unexplained fainting spells to sudden cardiac death.

What to do in an emergency?

We have often seen in movies, a person collapsing and being given shock by placing two paddles on chest (a maneuver to revive the patient by delivering shock through external defibrillator) and the doctor pronouncing the person has had a ‘Heart Attack’. Such misnomers are frequently used and the actual cause gets lost in oblivion. Such a state is known as a ‘Sudden Cardiac Arrest’ where the heart stops functioning suddenly because of the heart beat's malfunctioning and causing a life-threatening condition. Hence, if you feel your heart beat is missing or going too fast or slow, you need to see a cardiac specialist to get it diagnosed.

At Max Super Speciality Hospital, the best heart hospital in Delhi, a complete, in-depth analysis of the patient with an electrocardiogram, event monitoring and detailed electrophysiological studies, in the state-of-the-art EP lab, is done with personalised treatment to address the root cause of the problem, hence restoring the rhythm of the heart.