Arrhythmia - Treatment - Treatment

Your doctor may recommend that you adopt the following lifelong heart-healthy lifestyle changes to help lower your risk for conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease, which can lead to arrhythmia.

• Aiming for a healthy weight
• Being physically active
• Heart-healthy eating
• Managing stress
• Quitting smoking 

Your doctor may give you medicine for your arrhythmia. Some medicines are used in combination with each other or together with a procedure or a pacemaker. If the dose is too high, medicines to treat arrhythmia can cause an irregular rhythm. This happens more often in women.

• Adenosine to slow a racing heart. Adenosine acts quickly to slow electrical signals. It can cause some chest pain, flushing, and shortness of breath, but any discomfort typically passes soon.
• Atropine to treat a slow heart rate. This medicine may cause difficulty swallowing.
• Beta blockers to treat high blood pressure or a fast heart rate or to prevent repeat episodes of arrhythmia. Beta blockers can cause digestive trouble, sleep problems, and sexual dysfunction and can make some conduction disorders worse.
• Blood thinners to reduce the risk of blood clots forming. This helps prevent stroke. With blood-thinning medicines, there is a risk of bleeding.
• Calcium channel blockers to slow a rapid heart rate or the speed at which signals travel. Typically, they are used to control arrhythmias of the upper chambers. In some cases, calcium channel blockers can trigger ventricular fibrillation. They can also cause digestive trouble, swollen feet, or low blood pressure.
• Digitalis, or digoxin, to treat a fast heart rate. This medicine can cause nausea and may trigger arrhythmias.
• Potassium channel blockers to slow the heart rate. They work by lengthening the time it takes for heart cells to recover after firing, so that they do not fire and squeeze as often. Potassium channel blockers can cause low blood pressure or another arrhythmia.
• Sodium channel blockers to block transmission of electrical signals, lengthen cell recovery periods, and make cells less excitable. However, these drugs can increase risks of sudden cardiac arrest in people who have heart disease.

If medicines do not treat your arrhythmia, your doctor may recommend one of these procedures or devices.

• Cardioversion
• Catheter ablation
• Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs)
• Pacemakers

Treatment may also include managing any underlying condition, such as an electrolyte imbalance, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea, or thyroid disease.

Your doctor may use supplements to treat magnesium or electrolyte deficiencies. Electrolytes can also be an alternative to medicines that treat arrhythmia if your doctor is concerned that those medicines might trigger an arrhythmia.

Your doctor may also perform certain techniques to slow your heart rate. The exercises stimulate your body’s natural relaxation processes. They do this by affecting the vagus nerve, which helps control the heart rate. Techniques can include:

• Having you cough or gag
• Having you hold your breath and bear down, which is called the Valsalva maneuver
• Having you lie down
• Putting a towel dipped in ice-cold water over your face

• Living With will explain what your doctor may recommend including lifelong lifestyle changes and medical care to prevent your condition from recurring, getting worse, or causing complications.
• Research for Your Health will explain how we are using current research and advancing research to treat people with arrhythmia.
• Participate in NHLBI Clinical Trials will discuss our open and enrolling clinical studies that are investigating treatments for arrhythmia.