Strange sensations in your chest can cause panic if you don’t understand what’s going on
The clinic WOMAN’S GP DR HELEN WALL ON HER TOPIC OF THE WEEK
While it might be expected to have your heart ‘skip a beat’ when you’re the lead in a romcom movie, in real life the sensation of it beating hard and fast, or dipping in and out of beats, can be truly frightening.
In medical terms, the sensation of a noticeable heartbeat doing any of the above is referred to as ‘palpitations’. Some of you may be reading this having experienced them yourself and wondering if you should be worried. What – if anything – is your GP likely to do?
Palpitations come up commonly in my GP consultations, and mostly in women. The majority of women with palpitations are not found to have any underlying illness, but there are key steps that I need to take to determine this.
Firstly, there are many lifestyle factors that can trigger runs of palpitations and I’ll always start by asking about these. Stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, dehydration, caffeine, alcohol and some medications can all be common triggers. Palpitations should not be brought on suddenly by exercise, be painful or prolonged and should not cause you to faint, be short of breath, go dizzy or collapse. These are ‘alarm symptoms’ that would make me more worried as your GP. If you are experiencing palpitations with any of these features, please seek more urgent medical attention.
Most of the time no cause is found, but there are some conditions – either heart related (such as atrial fibrillation or a heart murmur) or non-heart related (such as an overactive thyroid or salt imbalance) – that can present with palpitations. Expect your GP to examine you and request some blood tests and an ECG (recording of the heart’s rhythm) to rule these conditions out or to find them and manage them accordingly.
If your symptoms are persistent or particularly bothersome you might be referred to a heart specialist (cardiologist) for further tests. Of course, you can have palpitations all month except the very day you go to see your GP or specialist! Don’t worry, the specialist will likely arrange for you to go home with a device on to try and capture what your heart is doing during your palpitations. In most cases, there will be nothing to worry about.
For those of you who’ve had palpitations, even if there’s ‘nothing to worry about’, they can remain bothersome. I’ve seen women driven to distrac
