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Asked by anon-252191 on 29 Apr 2020.
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Maria Marti answered on 29 Apr 2020:
Irregular heartbeats usually appear when the electrical system that tells the heart muscles to contract fails in some way. Sometimes, the cells that start the electrical signal (the sinus node) can be damaged and not send their signals at the right pace, leading to the heart not pumping regularly. Other times, normal electrical signals can be interrupted by electrical impulses that start from other parts of the heart when they shouldn’t. In some cases, it is the heart muscles that get damaged, and then the electrical signals do not travel correctly across the heart, and muscle contraction is faulty and generates irregular beats.
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Anabel Martinez Lyons answered on 30 Apr 2020:
Hi – thanks for your question! Most people that experience arrhythmias (heart rhythm or rate problems) can live healthy lives and, if needed, can manage the arrhythmia with help of medication or a pace maker, which is a machine put into the chest that zaps the heart gently and regularly to control the irregular heartbeat. However, as you asked in your question, certain types of arrhythmia are more common in people experiencing other, usually more severe, heart problems. This can be caused, as Maria has mentioned, by damage to the heart muscle (by something like a heart attack), or from enlargement of the heart over time, so that the normal electrical signals can’t be passed through the heart tissue effectively. Heart damage or changes in size and shape can result in an altered heartbeat, either by affecting the rhythm or the rate of the heart contraction. Hope that helps answer your question!
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Melanie Krause answered on 30 Apr 2020:
Great answers already!
I would add that sometimes a genetic mutation can cause the hart to not be properly formed so it pumps blood infrequently. One example is the protein Creld1 which is needed to form a part of the heart called the AV cushion. If the protein does not get produced or is produced wrongly this cushion doesn’t look the way it should because it wasn’t formed correctly during embryo development.
You may have heard about people with Down Syndrome or Trisomy21.. these people have three copies of the 21st chromosome.
The genetic information for building Creld1 lies on the 21st Chromosome and that is a reason why people with Down Syndrome have heart problems more often than people who do not have it.
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