Tachycardia treatment aims to return your heart to a healthy rhythm. This allows more blood to enter your heart and increases blood flow to the rest of your body.
Based on your condition, overall health and other factors, your treatment may include medication, non-surgical procedures and/or surgical procedures.
If another condition produces your racing heart, treating that may correct your tachycardia.
- Antiarrhythmics: These medicines work to help restore a normal heart rhythm.
- Beta blockers: These medicines block the effects of adrenaline on the heart, which slows the heart rate and lessens the force of heart contractions.
- Blood thinners: Some arrhythmias can increase your risk for blood clots that can lead to stroke. Like the name implies, blood thinners thin the blood and reduce the risk for clots.
- Calcium channel blockers: These medicines block calcium channels to the heart cells, which slows the heart rate and helps manage arrhythmias.
A non-surgical procedure may be needed to treat atrial fibrillation, or AFib, especially when symptoms aren’t well controlled with lifestyle changes and medicines. Common non-surgical procedures for atrial fibrillation are:
- Catheter ablation, or radiofrequency ablation: In this procedure, a thin, flexible tube called a catheter is inserted into a blood vessel and threaded to the heart. Electrodes inside the catheter allow your cardiologist to find the problem areas and destroy the abnormal tissue with radiofrequency energy.
- Cryoablation: A catheter is used to find and freeze the problem areas that cause an irregular heartbeat.
Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD)
This battery-powered device is placed under the skin in the chest. Wires going from the ICD to your heart detect abnormal heart rhythms and then send an electric shock to the heart to get it back into a normal rhythm. ICD is used for certain types of heart failure or for those with ventricular arrhythmias.
Pacemaker implantation
In this procedure, the surgeon places a small, battery-operated device called a pacemaker under the skin, usually near the collarbone. The pacemaker helps regulate your heart rate and rhythm.
