Hey Reddit!,
I’ve always had these “weird” feeling heartbeats that would often take my breathe away. I’ve been to doctors and cardiologists and they never happen (of course) when they do tests like EKGs and doctors always say I’m perfectly fine (even did a echocardiogram).
I finally was feeling them and I think I was able to capture it on my Apple Watch.
Is this what a PVC looks like? Again feel they uncomfortable and makes me short of breath when it happens.
I will definitely be showing it to my doctor as well.
It’s probably an ectopic beat. Caught mine, too. I have an ILR above my heart to catch arrhythmias and when I had a “missed” beat I took an ECG on the watch, and phoned the cardiac nurse the next day. She confirmed the device had recorded it and that it was an ectopic/extra beat.
I was so scared when I had stress and pvc.. it’s am unsettling feeling
Yes, definitely! Especially so when you have no idea what’s causing it!
I get one to five on most days and that’s normal. Everyday is still harmless, it’s how many a day that’s the issue. You need thousands a day for it yo be an issue.
Indeed. But it's still not normal for us to be aware of them. There may be an underlying issue somewhere.
It's possible, but very unlikely. If I'm monitoring my (admittedly very ill patients) I don't think much of isolated PVCs until I start to get more than 5-10 per minute. Even then, they aren't much to get excited about until they get strung together, are associated with hemodynamic issues, or start increasing (ie, my patient has 2-3/minute and a couple hours later 10/minute).
I would treat them as a general sign of cardiac irritability, but if you're having a hard time catching them on your watch they're not frequent enough to be terribly concerning unless you're feeling symptoms with them like dizziness/lightheadedness.
Just FYI - a PVC is a type of ectopic beat.