Question:

Can skipped beats from stress eventually cause more serious heart issues?

Can a person that keeps on having “skipped” heartbeats due to stress/being overtired eventually have problems with his/her heart?

Submitted by Brooke from Ohio on 04/24/2015

Answer:
by J. Alberto Lopez, MD

Very, very unlikely, as long as the heart is normal. We consider that only when the number of skips equals 20% of the total number [of heart beats], they may cause the heart muscle to weaken. If this is the case, one should probably take steps to eliminate the skipped beats. Currently, we cure most of these people with mapping and ablation of the area of origin of the PVCs (instead of using medications).