What is the medical term for irregular heartbeat

What is the medical term for irregular heartbeat

http://www.chacha.com/question/what-is-the-medical-term-for-irregular-heartbeat

In an arrhythmia the heartbeats may be too slow, too rapid, too irregular, or too early. Rapid arrhythmias are called tachycardias

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Plz help me cardioalogists! What do these medical terms mean?

Q: My mom went to see her cardioalogist due to having irregular heartbeats and she came back with a medical report with her results from wearing around one of those Holter heart monitors for a day. However, the reports have all these weird medical terms that we can’t understand. Her cardioalogists did explain everything to my mom, but her English is not the best so she didn’t catch everything the doctor said. So if you help me decipher these wacky terms I’d really appreciate it!ventricular ectopic activitysupraventricular ectopy tachycardiabradycardiaventricular bigeminyventricular trigeminy ventricular ectopyAlso, I’ve surfed the web and came up with 3 different possibilities for irregular heartbeats, but they all seem like the same thing. If you happen to have further knowledge in the medical field, could you also include what each thing is? Thanks!Premature Ventricular ContractionPremature Artial ContractionCardiac Arrhythmia

A: I think in order to understand all of this you need a basic understanding of what’s normalCheck out this link and click on the inset picture. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/heart-arrhythmias/DS00290/DSECTION=2It will give you an idea with terms about where the impulse for a heart beat originates and then how it makes its way through the heart.Now any ectopic activity is activity that arrises from a place it normally would not. The ventricle is the bottom two chamber of the heart – so ventricular ectopy is beats coming from the bottom of the heart that would not usually arrise from that location.Supra means “above.” In this case above means the atria, the A-V node or the pathway to the ventricle (see your diagram for help)Tachy means – greater than 100bpmBrady means less than 60 bpmVentricular bigeminy is a pattern where every other beat is a ventricularly originated beat.Ventricular trigeminy is a pattern where every third beat is a ventricularly originated beat. You should be ready for the next one – ventricular (bottom of the heart) ectopy (coming from a place one would not expect a heart beat to originate)PVC – ventricular contractions occurring before the normal atrially generated beat can be generated.PAC – an atrial beat that is generated from a place it would not be expected (aka – ectopy) that occurs before the normal area generates a beat. Very common and benign. Often affected by lack of sleep, caffiene, etc.Arrhythmia – any rhythm other than a regularly occurring rate that is generated in the atria at the SA node (#1 in the diagram). The term for a normal rhythm is called a normal sinus rhythm. Even an irregularly occuring rhythm coming from the right place is considered an arrhythmia.Every profession has its words to describe things particular to what it deals with. It helps everyone to communicate – so not so wacky, really. I hope this helps. Good luck.