Heart arrhythmia is a condition where the heart beats faster or slower than usual or when it misses a beat. The heart is a muscular organ which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. Blood provides the body with oxygen and nutrients. The normal heart rate for a body at rest is between 60-100 beats per minute.
Heart arrhythmia is a commonly experienced condition for most people and doesn’t present any cause for concern. However, serious types of arrhythmia can cause many problems, such as heart failure or stroke. Several types of arrhythmia prevent the heart from supplying the different organs with oxygen-rich blood. This often results in damage or total failure of the organs.
The heart has its own electrical system, which is responsible for sending impulses from the top of the heart to the bottom at a steady rate, or at a rate that the body needs blood. The electrical impulse originates from the upper chambers of the heart, also called the right atrium. The impulse then triggers the cardiac muscle to contract and release. If the electrical impulse is interrupted or fails to travel along the correct path down the heart, the contractions become irregular.
There are several types of arrhythmia such as bradycardia when the heart beats slower than normal, atrial fibrilation where the heart contracts irregularly at the upper chambers, ventricular fibrillation where the heart contracts irregularly at the lower chambers, premature contraction where heart beats occur too early and tachycardia where the heart beats faster than normal.
