SVT was put on beta blocker now skipped beats?!

[nickifoxx]

My history is that I had two long SVT episodes lasting around an hour or so.  Last one being 1/2/15 that took a while to get my breathing back to normal.  Finally saw the EP on the 20th of Jan and because of the SVT and anxiety, he put me on Atenolol 25mg twice a day.  This was kind of nice at first, no more racing beats!  A bit more lightheaded than usual, but pretty OK.

On the 4th of Feb, it started.  The heart skips.  I would get them in the past maybe once a day, once a week, once a month, it varied.  On that day and the days since I am having 4-5 per minute.  I am already on the brink of breakdown from the anxiety of all of it and now this??   My EP is sending me an event monitor, should be here early next week and I also visited Urgent Care and guess what they caught?  One single skipped beat on an EKG.  She heard just one as well.  She hooked me up to the EKG to watch for a while and NOTHING.  Doesn't that figure??

Could this be caused from the beta blocker?  I hate this, I just want my life back :(  Thanks for any ideas.

[CFS56]

I took atenolol for a couple of years and it did the same thing to me.  I only took it once a day and I could tell when it started to wear off because the skipped beats would stop.  Within an hour of taking the medication in the morning they would start back up again.  I switched to bystolic and it doesn't seem to do it as consistently, but if my heart rate gets really slow or if I increase the dose of bystolic (try to take 10mg vs 5), they start back up again.  The only thing I can figure is when your heart rate slows it makes it more likely to get ectopic beats.  It's been happening to me for 8 years now and I'm still here.  So try not to focus too much on the skips, the more you do, the worse they get.  Maybe you could talk to your doctor about trying a different medication or adjusting the dose of what you're taking?

[Jerry_NJ]

You might benefit from an anxiety medication.

I have been on beta blockers for about 15 years to lower my heart rate...it work there but does nothing to address my atrial fibrillation, happily with amore normal heart rate I don't notice the afib.

[kcolly32]

What might be happening is that since you know you have SVT you might have an accessory pathway or an extra pathway. I had AVNRT with an extra pathway that needed ablated. This extra pathway was causing me PACs, especially during exercise or when i was anxious. Since my ablation, i've had zero skipped beats or SVT. If you have that extra pathway it could be causing you have those skipped pathways as well. Atenolol is controlling your fast heart rate and now you notice the PACs because your SVT is being controlled. Also, i found out that PACs or those skipped beats can trigger SVT as well. You didn't state what happened what caused you to go into SVT but PACs are a known trigger.