Do PVCs realy carry risk and not so harmless

[saedsak]

Please have a look at these 2 studies that talk about PVCs and their Prognostic Significance in absence of heart disease i.e. in healthy heart people, do carry a negative prognosis. The studies are

• Relation of Ventricular Premature Complexes to the Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death: http://www.mendeley.com/research/left-ventricular-architecture-and-survival-in-africanamericans-free-of-coronary-heart-disease-from-the-atherosclerosis-risk-in-communities-aric-study/

• Premature Ventricular Complexes and the Risk of Incident Stroke: http://www.mendeley.com/research/metabolic-syndrome-clusters-and-the-risk-of-incident-stroke-the-atherosclerosis-risk-in-communities-aric-study/I know that smoking, hypertension, diabetes, family history, age are established and proven risk factors to develop future heart diseases…

1- Based on the above studies, can we consider PVCs as an additional risk factor for future heart diseases, like CAD and SCD for those who have PVCs but otherwise healthy heart fucntion and normal ECHO and Stress ECG?

2- If PVCs are now risk factor, does this apply on healthy people or those with known heart diseases?

3- Based on these studies, where do you rank the PVCs risk – if any - in compare to other risk factors….NO RISK, Slightly higher, very high in compare to those without PVCs.

4- After adjusting other factor, will my PVCs increase my risk of developing heart diseases in the future based on these studies and therefore, we should not consider PVCs harmless anymore.  

[Mom2four85]

check my journal called My personal heart page; In July 2009 I had several ekg's; echo; 24 hr holter, stress test, and tilt table test - all showed my heart was "structurally" normal.

I had an EP Study & Ablation on August 26, 2009 which found I had malignant arrhythmia's so they did a CTA, Xrays and cardiac MRI that showed nothing wrong - no structural heart problems; yet the next day I had a cardiac catherization that showed I had structural heart problems and I was dx with HOCM...

I've had echo's that say yes I have structural problems, then the next echo says no. What I find most intersting is I have an ICD, a dx of HOCM & malignant arrhythmia's and my last echo in March 2011 says my heart is structurally normal, so 2 years later; I'm still left wondering what the heck is really going on and what was missed by these tests.

[curmudgen]

Yes....  had a full cardiovascular work up - EKG, thallium stress test, echo...  diagnosis benign PAC's/PVC's - no evidence of cardiovascular disease....  cardiologists evaluation was that they were not worth ablating unless they became very bothersome.  Easy for him to say.

[saedsak]

Did anybody went thru the above studies or had a word with his doictor about them.... i am not a heart expert so i am not sure if PVCs still ok in otherwise healthy people with normal heart function and normal ECHO/ Stress ECG or they do carry some risk as per theses recent studies....

[curmudgen]

Quote from web site ---  heartdiseaseabout.....

"Our understanding of PVCs have changed dramatically over the past 30 years. At one time, they were assumed to be dangerous, and doctors were inclined to try to suppress PVCs with drugs whenever they saw them. During the last 15 to 20 years, however, careful studies have demonstrated three things: 1) In people with no significant underlying heart disease, PVCs do not indicate an increased risk. 2) In patients with significant heart disease, the presence of PVCs suggests that an already increased risk may be even higher. 3) Suppressing the PVCs with antiarrhythmic drugs does not reduce risk, and actually tends to increase the risk."

[Mom2four85]

I've read Relation of Ventricular Premature Complexes to the Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death before.

I question some of the same things you have here and maybe one day we'll have more answers.