If you have frequent heart palpitations or irregular heartbeats that last more than a few seconds, you may have an arrhythmia. If you have anemia, your blood doesn’t have enough red blood cells, and your heart may work harder to move oxygenated blood more quickly. For example, an overactive thyroid gland (hyperthyroidism) can cause a fast heartbeat. You may also notice changes in your heart rate if you have other medical conditions. Taking certain medicines like cold medications (decongestants).Hormonal changes during your menstrual cycle or when you’re pregnant.Drinking too much alcohol or using drugs like cocaine.Caffeine may make ventricles contract too soon, leaving you feeling like your heart skipped a beat. If you smoke or vape, nicotine can make your heart pound. Many things can affect your heart’s electrical signals. You may feel a fast heartbeat (tachycardia) or a slow heartbeat (bradycardia). Sometimes your heart’s electrical signals misfire, causing your heartbeat to change. There Are Many Causes of Heart Palpitations They also send oxygenated blood back out to your body. Rhythmic contractions of the chambers draw blood into your heart to replenish blood oxygen. These signals move through your heart in a constant cycle. Special tissue in your right atria, the sinoatrial (SA) node, continuously sends electrical signals that tell your heart to contract. There are two upper chambers (atria) and two lower chambers (ventricles). Your heart is a muscle made up of four chambers.

Get medical care right away if your heartbeat is irregular and you also have:Įven if you’re not experiencing other symptoms with heart flutters, you may want to check in with your doctor if they keep happening. The most important thing is to pay attention to what else is happening in your body when you notice your heart beating differently, says Demetrio Castillo, MD, an electrophysiologist (EP) at Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute. So how can you tell the difference between a harmless flutter and a dangerous change to your heartbeat? Though an irregular heartbeat may be concerning, heart flutters aren’t always a sign of something serious.

Heart flutters, or palpitations, happen to many people every day. Atypical atrial flutter originates from the left atrium or areas in the right atrium, such as surgical scars, and has a variable appearance on ECG in regards to the flutter waves.Ever had a pounding heart or felt your heart beat faster than usual? Maybe you’ve experienced the flip-flop feeling of your heart skipping a beat. This appears as positively-directed flutter waves in the inferior leads. This results in negatively-directed flutter waves in the inferior leads.Īt times, the direction of the circuit can reverse, causing clockwise atrial flutter from the same anatomical location. Typical atrial flutter rotates counterclockwise in direction, from a reentrant circuit around the tricuspid valve annulus and through the cavo-tricuspid isthmus. Also, atrial flutter can be described as “clockwise” or “counterclockwise” depending on the direction of the circuit. In this situation, giving adenosine will transiently slow the ventricular rate, unmasking the atrial flutter waves and allowing a more definitive diagnosis to be made.Ītrial flutter can described as “typical” (type I) or “atypical” (type II) based on the anatomic location from which it originates. When the heart rate is significantly elevated - that is, greater than 150 bpm - it is often difficult to determine atrial flutter from atrial fibrillation, atrial tachycardia or atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia, or AVNRT. This results in the rhythm becoming “irregularly irregular.” There are only two other rhythms that are commonly irregularly irregular, including atrial fibrillation and multifocal atrial tachycardia, or MAT. In this situation, there may be three P waves to one QRS complex, then a quick change to two P waves to one QRS complex, and so on any combination of P waves to QRS complexes can occur. The regularity of the QRS complexes frequently present with atrial flutter helps to distinguish it from atrial fibrillation, though atrial flutter with variable conduction of the P waves can also occur.

In this situation, the ventricular (QRS) rate will be exactly 150 bpm and regular.ĬLINICAL PEARL: A narrow complex tachycardia at a ventricular rate of exactly 150 bpm is very commonly atrial flutter. Typically, the atrial rate will be about 300 bpm, and only every other atrial depolarization will be conducted through the AV node. Just as in atrial fibrillation, not all of the P waves are able to conduct through the atrioventricular node, and thus the ventricular rate will not be as fast as the atrial rate.

Chest flutter