Prolonged Breath-Holding Can Be An Effective, Non-Invasive Treatment For Cardiac Arrhythmias: Study

Cardiac arrhythmia is usually treated with a catheter, passed through a vein in the groin or artery

Cardiac arrhythmias: Holding breath for over five minutes, with the help of a certain technique, can be an effective treatment for cardiac arrhythmias, researchers from University of Birmingham have found. Based on the findings of the study they conducted, it was found that a new technique can provide earlier diagnosis of ischaemic heart disease. The technique involves hyperventilating conscious, unmedicated patients using a mechanical ventilator that delivers air to the patient via a face mask. Researchers, however, have highlighted that there is still an urgent clinical need to develop non-invasive diagnostic tests for early ischemic heart disease. This is because it gets too late once angina has occurred.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, focuses on hyperventilation that causes hypocapnia, leading to temporary constriction in the coronary arteries. Researchers said that they wanted to explore if this affects could be used an early warning system to diagnose coronary heart disease.

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Prolonged breath holding as a treatment for cardiac arrhythmia

Findings of the study paves the way to induce breath-holds for over five minutes to support an emerging new method as part of which radiotherapy is used for cardiac ablation.

With this new procedure, arrhythmia patients undergo targeted radiotherapy, applied from outside the chest, to destroy tissue allowing incorrect electrical signals to cause an abnormal heart rhythm.

However, breathing was a problem to accurately diagnosis because each breath caused the heart to move within the chest, noted the researchers, but their technique could overcome this.

Lead study author Dr Michael Parkes said: "There is still little awareness of the simplicity, availability, and safety of non-invasive mechanical hyperventilation.

"We have already shown that patients with breast cancer can breath-hold safely for over five minutes using this technique," he said.

"The fact patients with angina were able to tolerate mechanical hyperventilation so well confirms its potential to improve the newly emerging procedure of using radiotherapy for cardiac ablation."

Dr Parkes said a safe breath-hold of over five minutes, using mechanically induced hypocapnia with oxygen enriched air, could allow targeting radiotherapy for cardiac ablation "much more precisely".

He further added that the advantage of radiotherapy over traditional radiofrequency or freezing was that it was non-invasive as it applied form outside the chest. He also highlighted that other techniques required catheter, passed through a vein in the groin or artery.

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Heart arrhythmias: What you should know

An arrhythmia is referred to irregular heartbeat which occurs when the heart beats too fast, too slowly, too early, or too irregularly. Arrhythmias occur when electric signals to the heart which coordinate heartbeats are not working properly. Many heart arrhythmias are harmless, but if they are particularly abnormal of occur as a result of weak or damaged heart, they can cause serious and potentially fatal symptoms.

Heart arrhythmia is characterised by irregular heart beat
Photo Credit: iStock

Heart arrhythmias may be caused because of diabetes, alcohol abuse, excessive coffee consumption, heart disease like cognitive heart failure, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, stress, smoking, heart attack or structural changes to the heart.

Also read: Follow These Diet And Lifestyle Tips To Reduce Risk Of Heart Attack

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