Posted by Ken Willis on July 16, 2002 at 19:51:11:
In Reply to: Re: Went backpacking posted by Tim Hawkins on July 15, 2002 at 17:02:07:
That's interesting, Tim, about the correlation of your afib/flutter episodes with altitude. Mine was purely exertion-related. Incidentally, I was in my cardiologist's office last Friday when I started getting the same kind of arrhythmia that I got in the tent at the end of our first day backpacking, except that I wasn't getting the perceived skipped beats of PACs. There would be from a few seconds to maybe half a minute of arrhythmia followed by NSR. It may have averaged out to about half in and half out of NSR for about 30 minutes, and then it converted to NSR. I haven't had a blip since then. They were due to download some events stored in my pacemaker, so while I was hooked up, the doc looked at the tracing of my rhythm. He said it was strange and looked something like SVT (supraventricular tachycardia). Tim, I wonder whether your PACs were interspersed with another arrhythmia like mine. My sense is that this is just a point along a trend line that is very favorable for getting rid of all arrhythmia. I hope so, anyway. Good luck, and enjoy the mountains!