Welcome to our Arrhythmia Training Center providing definitions, practice drills, quizzes, lessons and interactive guides.
A heart arrhythmia is an irregular heart beat: the beat may be too fast, too slow, or the rhythm may be irregular.
Arrhythmias can be classified by their origin (atria or ventricles) and by heart rate.
A fast (over 100 beats per minute) heart rate is called tachycardia. Tachycardias can originate in the atria or ventricles.
Supraventricular arrhythmias include:
Ventricular arrhythmias include:
Bradycardia describes slow heart rates (under 60 beats per minute). A slow heart rate may be normal, for example, in athletes. In other patients, it may be a sign of an abnormal heart condition. Problems in the heart's electrical conduction system cause abnormalities such as:
Premature Beat is a term that describes an extra beat, occurring earlier than normal.
Common arrhythmia signs or symptoms include:
Other signs and symptoms include:
Additionally, many arrhythmias do not create easily noticed signs or symptoms
Several types of tests may be employed to reveal certain arrhythmia symptoms and to diagnose arrhythmias: electrocardiograms, holter monitors, event monitors, stress tests, echocardiograms, electrophysiology studies, head-up-tilt-table tests and cardiac catheterization. Here we provide training tools focused on electrocardiograms. We provide these training tools:
A good starting point is our EKG Basics training course. The course provides training on the key features of an EKG tracing. These features include observing P-wave forms, measurement of EKG intervals and segments, assessment of rhythm, calculating heart rate, and the evaluation of other relevant wave segments. The practice drills allow students to build skills interactively.
The heart arrhythmia practice drills provide a test EKG tracing and users are asked to identify the type of arrhythmia. Each answer is immediately evaluated and the correct classification of the EKG tracing is provided, along with a detailed explanation. A directory of arrhythmias is also provided.
The quiz is structured like a classroom exam. The quiz present twenty EKGs. Users answer each question and at the end of the quiz, a fully graded report is provided. This graded report provides scoring as well as the correct answer to each question. Top scores and mean scores are also provided. This quiz draws its questions from a library of over 300 EKGs, allowing users to take the quiz multiple times.
Try the beta version of our ECG monitor challenge. This quiz uses a simulated patient monitor with moving waveform instead of a paper tracing. As with the quiz described above, twenty questions are presented, then a graded report is available.
NIH Wikipedia