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One of the most common heart ailments among Americans is arrhythmia – an irregular heart beat. Treatment can range from doing absolutely nothing to taking a daily medication to even surgery. Choosing the best option isn’t easy, especially when the patient is only 5 years old.

“So, you said she had one episode of this before?” asks Dr. David Goo of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

“She had one this month,” says Priscilla Bergman, mother of 5-year-old Dalin. “It’s been the first one in two years.”

Dalin suffers from an arrhythmia – specifically SVT.

“[SVT] stands for ‘super-ventricular tachycardia’ – where the heart rate beats very, very fast,” explains Goo, “the heart rate beating so fast it doesn’t have a chance to fill up with blood anymore and so the body doesn’t get enough blood to the vital organs.”

Often, these episodes go away on their own. But for at least an hour now, Dalin’s heartbeat has been over 200, twice the normal rate for a child her age.

“And so we went to the second option, which was a medicine called Adenosine,” explains Goo.

Adenosine acts as a restart button. It reboots the heart, hopefully at the right pace.

“You can see right here,” Goo says with EKG in hand, “this is where the Adenosine started working. You’ll have a pause in the heart rate, and then hopefully the automaticity or the regular rhythm of the heart will start up again here.”

Dalin’s heart rate is now back to normal. The cause of her arrhythmia is unknown, but there are two ways to manage it – with medication or with surgery.

“There are children with these abnormal electrical currents in the top of their heart that need what they call ablation, where they actually take a laser and burn the abnormal pathways out of the heart,” says Goo, but he hopes that the medication will work for the rest of her life.

What We Need To Know

• A child’s normal resting heart rate should be in the range of 90 to 120.




• Vagal maneuvers, which involve ice packs on the face, can help stop SVT.




• Valsalva maneuvers, or breathing into a paper bag, can also help.




• If none of those techniques work, it is important to seek medical attention.




• If left in SVT for long periods of time, the heart can enlarge and possibly go into failure.




• Stimulants such as caffeine or cough medicines can send someone with arrhythmia into SVT.

Resources

• American Heart Association




• National Library of Medicine




• American Academy of Family Physicians

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