Thursday, March 13, 2014

The Loop

A 32 year old patient presents with a chief complaint of episodes of sudden onset palpitations and "weird feelings in the chest." This is accompanied by dizziness. When he has these episodes, his heart rate is 120-220. An EKG is shown below.

Breaking this arrhythmia can easily be done with adenosine, vagal maneuvers, calcium channel blockers, and beta blockers.

Challenge: What's your diagnosis?

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1 comment:

Craig said...

The Loop

This is AVNRT or atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia, one of the common superventricular tachycardias. The EKG shows a regular narrow complex tachycardia at a rate of 130 with normal QRS complexes. The abnormal notching of the ST segment represents a retrograde P wave. This long RP tachycardia is due to an atypical AVNRT.

Source: UpToDate.