The above quote is a common reason that patients come to visit their primary care physician. A number of these patients self-refer themselves to me for a cardiology consultation. They are concerned that these “heart skips” are early signs of serious heart disease. In almost every case, these extra systoles are of atrial or ventricular origin and are not harbingers of important cardiovascular disease. They are merely mild manifestations of an overactive sympathetic nervous system or a minor and clinically unimportant zone of cardiac hyperexcitability.
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