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Tachycardia for hours after asthma treatment, should I worry?

I was diagnosed almost exactly 1 yr ago with adult onset asthma and was at that time hospitalized for 5 days as a result of a moderately severe attack and bronchitis.  The breathing treatments they gave me every few hours would increase my heart rate to 130 - 140 and my hr would still be close to 120 by the time they came to do the next treatment 4 hrs later.  Throughout this past year I have been in the ER countless times and hospitalized a 2nd time in April all from the asthma and each time the treatments cause the same tachycardia and it lasts for hours after each treatment.  The ER docs are always a bit alarmed by it and keep me a little longer than normal just to make sure I am ok.  I now do neb treatments at home regularly and my resting heartrate stays close to 120 almost all the time, except I suppose at night when I go more than a few hours without a neb treatment.  

As you can imagine having a high heartrate all the time is quite uncomfortable and I do not sleep easily or well.  I was in the ER again this morning with pneumonia and an asthma attack my nebs at home could not control, they gave more nebs and solumedrol and were quite concerned that my heartrate stayed at 130 for an hour after the 1st treatment and still hadn't gotten below 110 5 hours later, and I had just been laying there in the bed.  They kept me on a heart monitor and checked on me frequently and the doc encouraged me to see my GP and discuss my heartrate.  

I am sitting here now feeling my pulse race as it has been all day and I guess I am worried about it now since they ER staff seemed to be.  I know I need the meds to control my asthma, but am I a ticking time bomb for a stroke or something with my pulse staying up for so long???
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Avatar universal
Are there any other drugs that can help you without actually giving you that side effect? I just happen to browse the net since my toddler son is temporarily getting albuterol nebulizer treatment for his cough and it does make his heart rate increase up to 160 bpm. I can’t imagine having to deal with it long term.  I would try to seek more options if you haven’t already because you don’t deserve to just settle with side effects and discomfort to address your asthma. Good luck to you and prayers coming your way.
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Avatar universal
dis s dr.karthik, u mentioned dat treatment for SVT,did u tried before for any patients ,is it succesful.kindly give a reply
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Avatar universal
I have an SVT. And long acting ventalin type meds make my heart rate go up to 165 whether or not I was in SVT I don't know. I just don't take them as per the cardiologist recommendation. I am wondering what they were giving you in emerg, because I do not have any problem with Ventalin which is short acting.

Another trick for reducing your heart rate is having a bowel movement. Holding your breath and splash your face with cold water or put your face into cold water in the sink. (a study at UBC with animals that dive into cold water discovered this). Press against your eyes.
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144586 tn?1284666164
Another "trick" to lower heartrate is to simply cough. Coughing stimulates the vagus nerve also. The susceptability to coughing varies with every individual. In some people a cough can drop the heart-rate by 20 beats. In others the rate is hardly affected at all. It's worth a try. Valium is a wonderful drug and I am upset to this day that it has been declared a schedule one substance. During the 1970's it was issued like aspirin, and has few side effects, outside of somewhat degraded mentation. Reducing the amount of albuterol is helpful. When you turn the nebulizer, on exhale to the limit of possibility, then inhale from the nebulizer to the limt, take your mouth off the nebulizer and hold your breath as long as you can. Wait four minutes and do the same with two puffs of Atrovent (iatropium bromide).  Atrovent (in some people) does not irritate the heart as much. The combination treatments reduce the incidence of tachycardia. A second thing to do is to ensure you are properly hydrated and drink at least 32 ounces of water/electrolytes a day. Alst get your hematocrit checked. Females often have a lowered hematocrit. This contributes to an elevated heartrate. Very, very ocasionally,
"heart-pounding" is due to a calcium deficiency. This is unusual, but should be considered. Calcium is necessary for muscular contraction. I have often had a heartrate of 110, which is abnormal, but I've lived with that for a long, long time. Decades.  Curiously, as I age, the rate has dropped into the normal range. I don't have any easy answers for your condition. There are medications and electrical means of dealing with very high heart rates. The hospital likes to avoid this. The best of luck.
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Avatar universal
Thanks for the great insight, the whole sphincter maneuver is a bit intimidating to consider, but I will certainly keep that in mind and look into it a bit more.  I will also ask my Dr. when I go next week about a standby RX for valium or something similar that I could perhaps take in the evenings to help counteract the high heart rate so perhaps I can get some sleep.  I am currently functioning on anywhere from 2hrs to 4.5hrs a night and usually spread out over the course of the entire night, not consecutively.  It's certainly affecting my ability to function.  Not sure if my Dr. will go for the valium, he along with several other Dr.'s I've heard about put into place a new policy not long after the death of Michael Jackson which states that he will not write RX for any narcotics or sedatives unless a specialist is first consulted and recommends the meds, I suppose he is just concerned about backlash from potential problems if patients abuse the drugs, but I found the timing of the new policy to be  a bit ridiculous, it's not as if my Dr treats high profile celebrities.  I'll still talk with him about it but we'll see.
I am encouraged to hear that you have dealt with high heart rate for so long with no major problems, though I wonder how in the world have you learned to cope with the feeling of it?  I feel electrified and shaky all the time, like I want to climb the walls, and I am so irritable I will snap at anyone and everything that interrupts my thoughts.   I lie still in bed and feel my heart pounding throughout my entire body, it is the most unsettling feeling and it's been constant for the last several weeks that I have had to do the neb treatments continuously.  How do you manage?
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144586 tn?1284666164
Youir heart rate is a tad high, but not in the lethal range. Your high heart-rate is partly compensatory and partly due to stimulation by the drugs used to treat the asthma. Albuterol sulfate is a common bronchodilator and in some people causes a high heart-rate. There were two traditional treatment to reduce the heart-rate in such cases. Carotid massage, a mainstay of 1970/s medicine, has been outlawed because the massage dislodges deposits which can cause strokes. The other treatment is to "strain" on the toilet or insert a lubricated gloved finger in your anus "forcing" the sphincter and insert and withdraw it several times.  In the anal sphincter is a receptor for the vagus nerve and when stimulated this drops the heart rate twenty to forty beats. It's an embarrassing treatment, but it works.  In many ways it's a better treatment than administering a drug.  That's why most people are found dead on the toilet. The problem with a high heart rate is not a stroke, providing blood pressure is within normal limits, but an increased propensity for the heart to enter a condition known as ventricular fibrillation. A pulse rate over 100 is considered "tachcardia". On the other hand I have had a pulse rate over 100 for decades.   Physicians sometime prescribe medications for lowering heart-rate, but this interferes with the ability of the body to compensate for low oxygenation. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.  You might suggest to your physician that they administer valium with the treatment. This was another "old mainstay" until some idiot convinced the DEA to certify valium as a "schedule one" drug. Decades ago you didn't even have to sign for it.
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