Cardiac Arrhythmias

Your heart beats. Normally it does so so reliably that you forget it — seventy, eighty times per minute, day and night, without your giving it a thought. And then, suddenly, it stumbles. One beat too many. One beat too few. A flutter, a racing, a pause that takes your breath away. For a moment you feel what you otherwise never feel: that there is an organ in your chest working that you cannot control. And this moment is frightening.

Medically there are many forms: extrasystoles, atrial fibrillation, tachycardias, bradycardias — each with its own mechanism, its own risk profile. But regardless of the cardiological classification, one question rarely gets asked: what throws a heart out of rhythm — a heart that by nature knows the most stable rhythm the human body has to offer? What disturbs a pacemaker designed to beat steadily for a lifetime?