Hello
I’ve just been diagnosed with PACs after wearing a holter monitor for a month. I don’t have any other symptoms I’ve seen listed related to the PACs other than that I can feel them when they happen. They seem to come on during bouts of anxiety/stress. For example I’ve been feeling them a lot all day since receive the diagnosis. I don’t have high blood pressure or any signs of sleep apnea.
The cardiologist I’ve been working with wants to put me on 25mg of metoprolol. It seems heavy handed to me and I’m not usually one to jump straight into a medication, so I’m hesitant to start that without potentially trying other options first.
If I do start taking metoprolol what kinds of impacts on training would I expect? I’m 32, 5’7, 155lbs and have no other diagnosis and take no other medication if that helps with anything.
That is a very low dose of metoprolol; outside of potentially limiting your maximum heart rate (e.g., during high intensity conditioning work), I doubt you would experience a significant impact.
With that said, outside of modifying any clear lifestyle factors that precipitate an individual’s symptomatic PACs, medications and catheter ablation are essentially the only other treatments. I would want to be very confident, however, that an individual’s’ PACs are actually symptomatic, as they are quite common, often asymptomatic, and typically benign in most individuals.
Thanks for your thoughts @Austin_Baraki . How can I express to my doctor without potentially getting confrontational that I’m not looking for a quick fix and question how he came to the decision to prescribe medication? I’m not against medication I just want to make sure I don’t fall into the bucket (in his mind) of people who are just looking to be prescribed a pill.
Remember that you, the patient, are the one in charge here. You are consulting a physician for medical advice, which you are free and autonomous to take, or not.
So you don’t really “owe” this physician anything when it comes to your decision; with that said, if you do want to engage the discussion, you can simply say that you pursued a consultation with them in order to rule out anything dangerous causing your symptoms. If the PACs are deemed benign, you have gotten the reassurance you were looking for, and the symptoms are not bothersome enough to you so you’d rather not take the medicine.
If a patient told me that in this situation I’d shrug and say that’s completely fine and reasonable in situations where there is no significant risk to NOT taking a medicine.
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@Austin_Baraki Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions, it is very much appreciated.