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Can heart pounding ectopics come with pulsating head pressure?

Tiburon profile image
5 Replies

I am new here, but have already found the site to be very informative and helpful. For more than a year now, almost daily and usually at the end of the day, I have been experiencing pulsating head pressure and sometimes a sense of dizziness. The head pulsations often seem to sync with heart pounding. Monitors confirm that I have supraventricular ectopics and sometimes supraventricular tachycardia. A brain MRI, MRA and neurological tests provide no explanation for the head symptoms. Once or twice a year over the last 10-12 years, I have gone into Afib, almost always triggered by alcohol, exercise or lack of sleep. Ectopics seem to have the same triggers. I am 71, taking a statin, Lisinopril and a blood thinner. Neither my cardiologist nor the neurologists I have consulted have an explanation for the head symptoms. I also have paresthesia in my right foot, ankle and calf, for which the neurologists also have no explanation.

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Tiburon
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Tiburon profile image
Tiburon

Hi John — thanks for the suggestion. I do regularly check blood pressure. It stays within normal ranges.

AussieHeart profile image
AussieHeart

Same symptoms as you for past year. One time I thought I was experiencing a haemorrhage. Mainly get the head pressure with added sensory overload including noise intolerance and if look down dizziness. I also had severe wobbles that were internal. Cardiac electrophysiologist can’t explain it and said see a neurologist. I haven’t as my dx coincided with breathlessness, dizziness on standing due to low BP, passing out twice after prolonged palpitations and sudden eyesight loss. The neurologist back then found I had a 5mm perivascular space in the brain and same sized pituitary cyst. When I ask if that was a problem he replied I’ll tell you on autopsy. Hence why bother returning! A year later I was dx with paroxysmal aFIB. GP thinks our symptoms are health anxiety. Others with different dysautonomias experience our symptoms

Tiburon profile image
Tiburon in reply toAussieHeart

Most interesting …One of the neurologists I saw seemed to suggest anxiety as the cause. I passed it off as his fallback diagnosis when he had no other. But I looked back at symptoms I had 11 years ago. They matched what I am experiencing now. Then, I saw a psychiatrist who started me on an SSRI which helps with anxiety. The drug is called Lexapro. I’ve recently gone back to him and resumed Lexapro about 4 days ago. It’s too early to tell whether it will help. Fingers crossed. Your reference to dysautonomia is very helpful. Some form of it may be what I am dealing with.

KMRobbo profile image
KMRobbo

Could if be pulsatile tinnitus? Heart beat being heard in your ear or ears? Its is apparently made worse by flecainide

AussieHeart profile image
AussieHeart in reply toKMRobbo

Interestingly I was dx with tinnitus and mild right hearing loss. This was part of the work up that lead to aFIB dx involving 7 specialists trying to figure out the cause of my weird symptoms (noise intolerance to leg shakes). Now I take 1g magnesium and Vit D daily plus Bisoprolol as a pill in the pocket after weaning off daily 1.25mg as it caused severe fatigue. So far all symptoms seem better managed. BTW all my symptoms began after a dx of “high constipation” that I couldn’t get on top of until a gastroenterologist allowed me to clear out bowels with C-prep (colonoscopy pre-prep)! Don’t know if that was my ultimate cure but I still have paroxysmal AFib sadly.

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