Anyone know what this is ? Nonspecific Intraventricular Block

**shatter99** · 01-30-09, 03:01 PM

My wife has to go to the Cardiologists on monday for this: Nonspecific Intraventricular Block.

Any medical types know what this is?

**draco7891** · 01-30-09, 03:14 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_block

A heart block is a disease in the electrical system of the heart. This is opposed to coronary artery disease, which is disease of the blood vessels of the heart. While coronary artery disease can cause angina (chest pain) or myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart block can cause lightheadedness, syncope (fainting), and palpitations.

Intraventricular means it's in one of the ventricles (one of the bits that pumps the blood out of the heart and back into the body).

Nonspecific probably means they don't quite know where the block is, or whether it affects the whole ventricle or just a portion.

Draco

**Kraker Jak** · 01-30-09, 03:30 PM

Hey shatter!

Iam an EMT and have worked in the EMS field sine i was 16 (about 8 years).

Intraventricular simply means in the Ventricle of the heart. You have 4 chambers in your heart. Left and Right Atrium, and left and right Ventricular.

The Ventricles pump un oxygenated blood to the heart, from which it recieves from other veins in the body. After the blood passes through the heart (which oxygenates the blood), the atriums take the blood and pump it back to the artery's of the body. If you wife is having a "nonspecific" (also known as "Diffuse") simply means there was an adnormal PQRST wav reading on her ECG/EKG (Electrocardiogram, the "beep, beep" machine

). Which means the way her heart is beating, is slightly adnormal. Each wav on the EKG is represnted by the letter...for example...(forgive me if i miss a few things, been a while since EMT school, and this is more Para-medic stuff, although ive always loved how the heart works

)

What you see there is each wav. The Q wave is always located at the beginning of the QRS complex. Sometimes you cant see it, just depends on how strong the heart is...The P-R interval represents the time it takes an impulse to travel from the atria through the AV node, bundle of His, and bundle branches to the Purkinje fibres. This is where your doctor most likely found your wifes Diffuse blockage. The time was most likely delayed from when the heart contracted to take blood from the ventricle and pass it through the heart to the atriums...

Diffuse blocks can be caused by several things, including Electrolyte imbalance (hyperkalemia), Heart Disease (MI, cardiomayopethies, and other advanced diseases like congestive heart failure), After a cardiac arrest (such as a myocardial infarction), and sometimes can be linked to some drugs like Quinidine, procainamide, and other antiarrhythmic drugs.

I would so not to worry about much for now, and wait to see what the cardiologist says. Sometimes, if the blockage isnt "unblockable" a pace maker could be used, but rare.

Hope this helps.

source: myself and wiki

**shatter99** · 01-30-09, 04:28 PM

Thanks for the assistance guys! I tried to find this on google, but it was just to much medical jargon for me. I figure someone on TTP would be able to explain this in english to me. I'l pass this on to the wife and makey it will calm her down a bit. Thanks again!

**killdeer** · 01-31-09, 08:48 AM

I will have to agree with Kraker on this one Shatter, I have been an ER nurse for 8 years and alot of people have heart irregularites they are not aware of from irregular heart rhytms, premature beats to the blocks, all which can be minor health problems to not a concern at all depending on the severity of the symptoms and underlying cause so of course a visit to an md would be your best bet especially since it looks like there was a reason for the discovery. Good Luck.

**flame** · 01-31-09, 10:42 AM

That was a pretty good explanation kraker. I don't know a whole lot about reading rhythms thats more of my wife's deal. But lots of people have irregularities and never have problems. Some problems can give a higher risk for heart attack. Some times the doc just wants it checked out to be on the safe side, other times it is something that needs to be treated. I wouldn't really worry about it, the cardiologist may run an EKG and some other tests and say she's fine. Dont sweat it to much, if it was really a bad rhythm the doc would have sent your wife to the ER right away.