Dizziness, malaise, fainting, palpitations and cardiac arrest are some of the signs that the heart rhythm is not doing well. According to the Brazilian Society of Cardiac Arrhythmias, the mismatch can affect one in four people throughout life and cause the sudden death of more than 300 thousand people in Brazil per year.
“There are situations in which the heart beats very slowly, called bradycardias. In others, it accelerates a lot, it’s the tachycardia. In others, it simply knocks in an unorganized way. All these abnormalities are called arrhythmias and need to be treated”, says the organization’s president, Ricardo Alkmim Teixeira.
This week, the CNN Vital Signs makes a visit to different operating rooms to monitor the main treatments for this heart problem. The program presented by cardiologist Roberto Kalil will be aired this Wednesday (29), at 22:30.
In addition to pacemaker implants and defibrillators, one of the procedures for the treatment of arrhythmias that has evolved in recent years was radiofrequency ablation. This is a technique for cauterizing the short circuit of arrhythmia, which helps to eliminate sources of disorganization in the heartbeat.
“This type of treatment is mainly indicated for cases of atrial fibrillation, an arrhythmia that happens more often in the elderly. From the age of 40 onwards, perhaps 1 to 2% of the population has this type of arrhythmia. This increases to 10% between 70 and 80 years of age”, explains Mauricio Scanavacca, director of the Arrhythmia Clinic at Instituto do Coração (Incor).
In an exclusive interview to the program, musician Toquinho tells his personal experience with arrhythmia and the technique he used to deal with the problem. Between strumming on the guitar, Toquinho reveals that “the heart started with a beat that sounded like a messy samba school drum set”.
“There was an unease as if life had gone a little bit, a feeling of emptiness. Then I went to the hospital at dawn and you go normal. It was just a mismatch, not tachycardia. The heart was out of step”, he says.
THE CNN Vital Signs it also delves into the story of another musician: Beethoven. A study published in 2014 in the scientific journal of the Johns Hopkins University, in the United States, identified, from the music of the German composer, that he also suffered from arrhythmia.
“His works had some peculiarities that we didn’t see in other great composers. According to the researchers, it seemed that he was reading his own heartbeat, which is possible since he became deaf”, comments cardiologist Sergio Timerman.
At Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, Roberto Kalil talks with conductor Roberto Minczuk about the topic. “It is possible for us to notice in Beethoven’s work a rhythmic inconstancy, which makes him even more brilliant and may be related to what this study shows”, highlights Minczuk.
Reference: CNN Brasil
