Make an Appointment
Talk to DoctorOverview
Heart palpitations are sensations of a hammering, fluttering, or rapid heartbeat, and are brought on by a medical condition, stress, exercise, or medicine. Although unsettling, they are not harmful. Rarely, heart palpitations may be a sign of a more severe heart issue, such as an arrhythmia, which may need to be treated.
Symptoms
Heart palpitations can have the following symptoms of the heart:
- Pounding
- Flip-flopping
- Skipping beats
- Beating too quick
- Rapidly fluttering
The heart palpitations can occur during activities or when you are resting and can be felt in the neck, throat as well as the chest. The majority of the time, brief, occasional palpitations don’t require evaluation. Consult your doctor if you have a history of heart disease and have frequent or worsening palpitations. To determine whether the palpitations are brought on by a more serious cardiac condition, you might require heart-monitoring tests.
If you get heart palpitations together with these symptoms, call for emergency medical help:
- Fainting
- Severe dizziness
- Severe difficulty of breathing
- Chest pain or discomfort
Causes
The cause of heart palpitations is frequently unknown. Typical causes include
- Strong emotional reactions like anxiety, stress, or panic attacks
- Depression
- Exercising hard
- Fever
- Stimulants like coffee, nicotine, cocaine, amphetamines, and pseudoephedrine-containing cough and cold remedies
- Changes in hormones brought on by menstruation, pregnancy, or menopause
- Inadequate or excessive thyroid hormone levels
Sometimes, significant issues like an abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) might be detected by heart palpitations.
A heartbeat that is abnormally fast (tachycardia), unusually slow (bradycardia), different from the normal heart rhythm, or a combination of the three can all be caused by arrhythmias.
Risk factors
These are the risk factors of heart palpitation:
- Panic attack or anxiety
- Stress
- Taking medications for cold or asthma which are stimulants
- Having other heart conditions like history of heart attack or heart surgery, or heart rhythm that is irregular.
- Hyperthyroidism-having a thyroid gland that is extremely active
- Pregnancy
Diagnosis
A doctor will do a physical examination and use a stethoscope to listen to your heart to identify palpitations and to check for signs of conditions like an enlarged thyroid gland that might cause heart palpitations.
Tests that may be performed if your doctor suspects that palpitations are brought on by an irregular heartbeat or another cardiac problem include:
- Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG): the electrical activity of the heart is measured by this rapid and painless examination. Electrodes are applied to the arms, legs, and occasionally the chest in the form of sticky patches and connected by wires to a computer, which shows the test findings. If the heart is beating too slowly, too quickly, or not at all, an ECG might reveal this.
- Holter monitoring: worn to monitor the heart’s rhythm and beat during routine activities for a day or longer to find heart palpitations that are missed by a standard ECG examination. Smart watches and other portable electronics provide remote ECG monitoring.
- Event recording: used if you don’t have irregular heartbeat when using a Holter monitor or if the occurrences are less often than once per week. As soon as symptoms appear, you click a button. Normally, you wear an event recorder for up to 30 days or until you experience an arrhythmia or symptoms.
- Echocardiogram: non-invasive examination where sound waves are used to produce animated images of the beating heart. It can reveal issues with the heart’s structure and blood flow.
Treatment
Cardiac palpitations rarely need to be treated unless they are brought on by a heart problem. Instead, a doctor might advise taking precautions to stay away from the triggers that lead to palpitations.
Treatment for palpitations that are brought on by a cardiac problem, such as an arrhythmia, will concentrate on resolving the issue.
