Bradycardia  

Bradycardia refers to an abnormal slow heart rate of fewer than 60 beats per minute. It can be symptomatic if the heart rate drops to 50 beats per minute. It is considered to be normal for young and healthy individuals to have a slow resting heart rate. In fact many athletes have been trained to keep their heart rate level low as part of their endurance training. Lance Armstrong a very popular cyclist has a documented heart rate in the range of 32-34 beats per minute.

When diagnosing Bardycardia the first step is to determine the symptoms such as fatigue, and how much the person can physical exert before feeling dizzy or experiencing other symptoms such as faintness. These are the key symptoms that need to be analyzed when undergoing the process of determining if the person has Bardycardia.

Resting Bradycardia is not serious if the person does not suffer from symptoms such as faintness, weakness, chest discomfort and shortness of breath that is associated with the sickness. The sinus rhythms of Bradycardia is a P-wave on the ECG which indicates it is normal in both amplitude and vector t. Bradycardia is noted in QRS complex and T waves.

Bradycardia for an infant refers to a situation when the baby’s heart rate is under 150 beats per minute. Bradycardia will make an infant heartbeat to be less than 100 beats per minute. Bradycardia can cause sickness such as infection, anemia, body temperature change, hypoglycemia, and breathing problems in infants.

Premature babies suffer from apnea and Bradycardia more often than full term babies. Until now, no one knows why baby suffers from Bradycardia. Bradycardia has to do with the center of the brain that regulates breathing and in some cases it may not be fully developed in the baby. If your baby suffers from Bradycardia, you can gently touch your baby or rock the incubator to get your baby to start breathing again. Bradycardia can be treated by giving medication such as theophylline or caffeine to the baby.

Bradycardia can be considered both cardiac and non-cardiac. Non cardiac causes include drug abuse, metabolic issues, endocrine issues, imbalance in electrolyte. Cardiac causes for Bradycardia include various types of heart diseases such as ischemic heart disease, vascular heart disease, valvular heart disease as well as degenerate disease.