Ventricular tachycardia is a heart rhythm disorder in which the heart beats too quickly. It’s caused by an abnormal lower chamber of the heart. Treatment usually requires medications and, sometimes, ablation procedures. Nishaki Mehta, MD, discusses the uncomfortable symptoms and of this serious condition, which can lead to death.
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Ventricular tachycardia is an abnormal and fast heart rhythm disorder that arises from the lower chambers of the heart, which are called the ventricles. It can be felt as some chest discomfort, difficulty breathing, episodes or near-fainting, or fully, frankly fainting, and in very dangerous conditions it can also lead to death.
Our first approach is to try to optimize the heart tissue and make it as strong as possible with the use of the best medications for that individual. After that, there are a class of medications, called anti-arrhythmic drugs, that can suppress these irregular heart rhythm circuits and prevent them from firing. And then we also have ablation procedures, where we find the regions of the scar where the electrical routes are short-circuiting and causing the ventricular tachycardia.
Once we determine those regions of scar, we perform ablations or destroy that area by applying thermal lesions so that those areas cannot keep firing. So sometimes it’s a combination. It requires the best optimization of the heart. It requires anti-arrhythmic drugs, and ablation procedures. So, no two patients have the same kind of ventricular arrhythmia.
I believe UVA does a fantastic job with ventricular tachycardia management because this condition is complex, and this condition requires very close coordination and input from not just the electrophysiologists, but also the heart failure doctors, the imaging experts. Imaging procedures like cardiac MRI, which are done even with patients with defibrillators here at UVA. And that’s not the case in most centers across the country.
