Short run of sudden fast hard beats - was it SVT or VT?

[peachy123]

My palpitations choose to act up at the most inappropriate times.

Last night I went to a&e because I was having quite a lot of palpitations (the usual hard thump ones) and bad chest pain.

Got bloods and ECG, everything came back fine.

Then literally about half an hour after I got home from the hospital I was lying funny in bed and was leaning on my stomach (often brings palps on) and suddenly got the very HARD FAST SLIGHTY IRREGULAR palpitations. These ones scare me the most because they are different to my normal sinus tachycardia.

They just come out of nowhere and my heart speeds up very fast and beats very hard, then goes back to normal.

Usually I will get these for no more than 4 beats and it quickly goes back to normal. So I tensed up waiting for them to calm down, only it didn’t - the string of very hard fast palpitations continued for about 8 seconds. Then I got really scared and instinctively did a valsava manoeuvre. And finally after about 20 of these hard fast beats my heart went back to normal.

Now I’m really scared it may have been SVT or worse - VT. I have no idea what either of these feel like though so I can’t be sure. I don’t want to go back to a&e when they found nothing wrong. But it really freaked me out last night.

Does anyone know what SVT feels like or has experienced it? Can SVT occur in a normal heart with no abnormalities?

[DaisyFay]

Hi, I’ve actually posted a similar question over the past week. I have also been experiencing VERY sudden hard and VERY fast heart rate that then suddenly stops. I too am in the grips of anxiety regarding it but there are some things my doctor said that may reassure you... He said to me that SVTs are very common, can happen in healthy hearts, can be triggered by many things, they can be treated. VTs are very rare and almost never seen a heart without some kind of heart disease, he said people with these often loose consciousness and are very ill, they are easier to spot as there are other signs of heart problems. But he also did say, as did others on this forum, anxiety can create panic attacks that happen exactly in this way.
I’m not a doctor so obviously not advice but currently going through the same thing and thought maybe the things I’ve been learning may help reassure you x

[DaisyFay]

You could look at my thread named “what just happened to my heart” as I received some great replies about adrenaline etc that may also help you x