What Are The Various Kinds Of Abnormal Ventricular Heart Rhythms, And How Do They Differ From One Another?

Dr. Dickfeld answers the question: 'Types Of Abnormal Ventricular Rhythms?'

ByABC News
November 20, 2008, 12:42 PM

— -- Question: What are the various kinds of abnormal ventricular heart rhythms, and how do they differ from one another?

Answer :You know, broadly speaking, we look at two different main kinds of ventricular arrhythmias. These again, two fancy words, one of them is ventricular tachycardia, and then the other one is called ventricular fibrillation. The ventricular tachycardia is characterized by something more regular. All of them are fast. All of them occur in the bottom chambers of the heart, the important chambers. But the ventricular tachycardias, it was somewhat more regular. And then we have ventricular fibrillation, and this is somewhat of an irregularized rhythm, in which wave forms occur and electricity occurs inside the heart in a more disorganized fashion.

Frequently, ventricular tachycardia can kind of transition into ventricular fibrillation, and the reason that we are very concerned about ventricular arrhythmias as a whole is that they frequently are what brings out sudden cardiac death. That means this is a disease that is one of the most prominent diseases in the United States, affects 300,000 people per year and is normally the reason that people go to bed and don't wake up. This is frequently due to these ventricular arrhythmias.