Symptoms of tachycardia

Tachycardia or palpitations are the colloquial descriptions of the so-called tachycardia, a condition defined as a pulse rate of at least 100 beats per minute. Normally, the heart beats about 60 times per minute in adults; if it is greatly accelerated, a person affected perceives this as tachycardia, which can be accompanied by other symptoms.

Introduction

Normally you can’t feel your heart beating. However, when the pulse rises, as in tachycardia, the patient feels a racing heart in the chest. Depending on the case, cause and degree of severity, this feeling is described as throbbing, pounding or fluttering.

In some cases, the rapid throbbing is not limited to the chest but radiates into the carotid arteries. Sometimes this is even visible in the veins. The fact that the heart is racing so fast means that it has too little time to contract, making it impossible to pump out the blood adequately. Since the blood is responsible for transporting oxygen to the organs, a lack of oxygen results in virtually all organs of the body, although this manifests itself at different rates depending on the tissue. This oxygen deficiency then leads to the various symptoms that are often associated with tachycardia.

Effects

The brain‘s function is affected most rapidly when the supply of oxygen is not efficient. As a result, patients with tachycardia often suffer from dizziness (some patients complain of symptoms of shortness of breath or breathlessness, which is caused by the body’s lack of oxygen. In addition, the lungs must also be supplied with oxygen from the blood in order to perform their task correctly.

Areas of the lung that do not receive enough blood are excluded from breathing because they cannot fulfill their purpose of oxygenating the blood anyway. Symptoms such as a general physical weakness can also occur, as muscles also no longer receive sufficient oxygen and are thus restricted in their ability to function. It is not uncommon for patients to describe not only a racing heart but also a heart stumbling, i.e. not a fast but nevertheless regular pulse but an irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia).

In such a case, there is usually a disturbance of the rhythm of the heart, which should definitely be clarified. The worst complication that can occur with tachycardia is sudden cardiac death. If the heart beats much too fast and also completely uncoordinated, at some point no more blood can be expelled.

This is known as ventricular fibrillation, which puts a patient in acute danger of death and requires resuscitation. If the tachycardia symptom occurs either in a strong physical (e.g. during sporting activities or when carrying heavy loads) or psychological (e.g. when highly nervous, excited or under stress) stress situation for a short period of time, and then disappears again by itself, this is normally a physiological process that is even beneficial to the body and should not be a cause for concern. However, if the palpitations occur for no apparent reason, occur more frequently in a wide variety of situations, do not go away again, or are accompanied by heart palpitations, it is advisable to consult a physician in order to be able to exclude an underlying disease as the cause.