“My mother has heart failure and PVC's. What can be done for her?”

Thanks for your question. PVCs, which stand for premature ventricular contractions are beats that are abnormal and originate from the ventricles. Most people do experience PVCs, and they may feel like a palpitation or "skipped" heartbeat. Usually, these beats are benign so long as they are not very frequent. There are many different reasons PVCs can occur and a cardiac work up is usually performed during consultation. PVCs can be a cause of heart failure if they are frequent (usually >10-20% of total heartbeats) and should be addressed. If this is the case, we usually start with medical management using medications to suppress the beats or we may proceed with ablation therapy targeting the location in the heart where the PVC originates. Consultation with an electrophysiologist is recommended if the burden of PVCs are high, causing heart failure or if symptoms are present. Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

PVCs are abnormal extra heart beats coming from heart lower chambers (ventricles). High number of PVCs can cause heart failure. PVCs could be treated using medications or a procedure called catheter ablation.

This could be due to heart failure or may be the reason for her heart failure. A beta blocker is used often to treat heart failure and pvcs

PVCs or premature ventricular contraction could be the culprit or the result of heart failure. High burden of these PVCs particularly more than 10,000 per day out associated with progression of the weakness of the heart and should be treated. Management could include the addition of special medication like beta blockers which could be tolerated and heart failure Patients, however if the PVCs burden is very high catheter ablation procedure can be very safe and very effective to eliminate these extra beats which could very well result in the reversal of your mom's heart failure. We have been very successful in such procedures with great success stories of reversal of the heart failure and improvement of the patient left ventricular function.

After a thorough evaluation by a cardiac EP, a possible curative option would be to ablate the PVCs.

Thanks,

Amrit Guptan, MD, PhD, FACC, FHRS

Hi,

The answer to your question depends on multiple factors. There are multiple causes for heart failure. One of these may be a high volume of PVCs. If there is concern, the PVCs might be causing the heart failure, they can be treated with medications or with a procedure called a catheter ablation. The chances of eliminating the PVCs are high in many cases, but this depends on where the PVCs are coming from.

Talk to her cardiologist, and determine if they believe the PVCs to be the cause of her heart failure or whether they are the RESULT of the heart failure. Either is possible.

I hope that helps.

Andrew A. Zadeh, MD