Heart Disease

Normal heart function is very dependent upon normal heart structure. Arrhythmias, especially ventricular arrhythmias, are linked with the presence of tissue damage in the heart. Unlike other organs, the heart is unable to generate new muscle tissue if it is damaged. Any injury the heart suffers-from losses of small islands of cells to large myocardial infarctions-results in "patches" of scar tissue filling in where muscle tissue is lost. The scar tissue does not contract like the normal tissue and does not transmit electrical impulses, resulting in changes in the conduction properties of the tissue. Just as maintenance personnel must know about a building and its previous repairs to know where its problems lie and how to repair it, physicians must know structural details about the heart to be able to predict and diagnose rhythm problems.

The following sections discuss heart diseases commonly encountered in patients with arrhythmias. It is noteworthy that ventricular arrhythmias correlate better with the presence of heart disease than do supraventricular arrhythmias and that many patients with supraventricular arrhythmias have no demonstrable heart disease.

Heart Disease Links