Stellan and SVT

Have you heard about Stellan? If you are a blog surfer like me, maybe you have.

Stellan (aka MckMuffin) is the 9-month old son of Jennifer McKinney (aka MckMama,) blogging author of www.MyCharmingKids.net.

Stellan has an unusually bad case of the relatively common condition called SVT, or supraventricular tachycardia.

Lots of people have SVT. I've suffered from it a bit myself. But most SVT is managed fairly effectively with beta blockers. That's what helped me. It actually has several different causes and several different manifestations, which you can read about here. For me, stress and birth control pills caused my SVT to get worse, which led to me taking beta blockers. Most of the time, my SVT doesn't require drugs at all.

Stellan's SVT is bad. His heart doesn't work properly AT ALL unless he's on beta blockers. Unfortunately, his body starts adjusting to the drugs and he requires higher and higher doses, risking his body becoming toxic. Recently, his doctors felt like he had maxed out on his current drug regimen and wanted to try something new. Something new HAS NOT WORKED AT ALL.

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What is SVT?

Tachycardia is, in short, a rapid heart beat. It can have various causes like hormone imbalances, stress, fever, blood loss, etc.

On your heart, there are certain receptors that receive electical impulses from the brain that tell the heart to beat. There's the SA node and the AV node. These typically work together to create a coordinated heartbeat. Sometimes, there is another spot on the heart that is telling the heart to beat. But this creates uncoordinated, and ineffective, heartbeats.

Ventricular tachycardia is when this extra impulse originates in the heart's ventricles.

Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) is when the extra impulse originates from anywhere else. Sometimes this leads to a rapid heartbeat. Other times, the heart sort of flutters, where it rushes a beat and then pauses, and then starts beating normally again. (I experience both.)

Breaking out of SVT

If a heart stays in SVT for too long, there are three ways to convert a heart out of SVT:
1. Vagal manuevers - holding your breath and bearing down like you are trying to poop, holding your breath for a few seconds, coughing, plunging your face into cold water, drinking a glass of ice cold water, and standing on your head.

2. Drugs - not sure how these work, but at least one of them causes the heart to stop momentarily, in the hopes that when it starts again, it'll be in normal sinus rhythm.

3. Electrical cardioversion - the delivery of a therapeutic dose of electrical impulses at a specific moment in the cardiac cycle.

Why is SVT bad?

Prolonged SVT is hard on the body, as Stellan is experiencing now. First of all, it's hard on your heart. Your heart actually rests between beats and can get worn out quickly if it isn't getting adequate rest. Also, if your heart isn't beating effectively, all the other parts of your body aren't getting oxygenated blood to function.

Stellan's kidneys have stopped functioning since they aren't being nourished. His core body temperature is below 95 degrees. His is lethargic, and sorta pasty. But he's alive.

What next?

Sometimes, drugs just don't work in converting the heart out of SVT into normal heart rhythm and an ablation is performed. An ablation is when a catheter is inserted into the heart and zaps/fries/lasers the portion of the heart that is sending out the faulty signal to the heart. Ablations on adults are pretty safe.

Ablations on children are not. Stellan and his heart are still so small. An ablation will likely also kill his functioning AV node, which means that his heart will not beat on its own at all and he will be dependant on a pacemaker for the rest of his life. The plan had always been to manage Stellan's SVT until he was about 4 years old before they did the ablation. He heart would be large enough to handle the ablation without issues.

Stellan will probably not make it that long. So the McKinney family is headed to Boston for the ablation and a pacemaker. But at least he'll be alive.

You can read more here.

I am not a doctor. Some of this information may not be exactly correct. But you get the gist of it.