PSVT occurs most often in young people and infants who have normal hearts. Risks include excessive smoking, caffeine, and alcohol use. PSVT can occur with digitalis toxicity. It can be a form of a reentry tachycardia, resembling Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

Call your health care provider if you experience your first episode of PSVT and symptoms do not end spontaneously in a few minutes. Call your health care provider if you have a history of PSVT and an episode does not resolve with Valsalva maneuver or if other symptoms accompany the rapid heart rate.

Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) is a rapid heart rate, initiated above the ventricles that occurs sporadically (paroxysmal). The heart rate may be 150 to 250 beats per minute (in children, the heart rate tends to be very high). There may be signs of poor perfusion. An ECG usually detects PSVT.

Symptoms may include palpitations (a sensation of feeling the heart beat), rapid pulse, anxiety, shortness of breath, or chest tightness. Additional symptoms that may be associated with this disease are fainting, dizziness, and pale color (pallor). Symptoms may start and stop suddenly and can last for a few minutes or as long as a day or two.

PSVT may resolve spontaneously. If symptoms occur or there are underlying cardiac disorders, treatment may include Valsalva maneuvers, massaging of the carotid arteries in the neck, electrical cardioversion (shock), or medications. Surgical modification of the electrical conduction pathway (the pathways in the heart that conduct the impulse to contract) may be recommended in some cases.

Avoid excessive smoking, caffeine, and alcohol use. In people at a high risk or who have had previous episodes of PSVT, medications used to treat the disorder may be given as a preventive (prophylactic) treatment.

All healthcare organizations are covered entities. This includes health care providers, health plans, employers, public health authorities, life insurers, and clearinghouses, billing agencies, information system vendors, service organizations and universities.

Adenocard (adenosine injection) is the drug recommended by the American Heart Association. Other medications that may be used include verapamil, amiodarone, sotalol, diltiazem, digoxin, procainamide, or others.

You are more likely to develop seasonal affective disorder if you are a female between the ages of 15 and 55. Between 60% and 90% of people with SAD are women, and those who have a relative with SAD are more likely to develop it. Older teens and young adults are also at risk for SAD. People living farther away from the equator develop SAD more often, but you can develop it no matter where you live.3 The risk of developing SAD for the first time decreases as you age.

About 40% of patients with wet AMD in one eye will develop AMD in the other eye within 5 years. Conversely, in 60% of patients the other eye is not affected. We cannot predict who will, or who will not develop changes in the second eye. We cannot predict the extent of vision loss. Dry AMD often involves both eyes but it often causes less disability than the wet form.

A: Most varieties of ichthyosis affect only one person in several tens of thousands. Ichthyosis Vulgaris, sometimes called common ichthyosis (vulgar means common in Latin), is the exception. It appears in approximately one person in every 250. Ichthyosis occurs worldwide and affects people of all races.

Most streamflow in the West is produced by melting snow in the spring (in general, about 75 percent). At lower elevations rain can be an important component of streamflow. El Nino effects on streamflow are magnified versions of the effects on the climate elements. Because of hydrologic lags (snow does not usually begin to melt until spring), the effects of El Nino are typically delayed, in some cases for several months.

The Oregon Forestland-Urban Interface Fire Protection Act of 1997 will apply to lands classified as “forestland-urban interface” by a local county classification committee. It will be limited to areas protected by the Department of Forestry where structure density ranges from a setting of urban (inside a city or urban growth boundary) to suburban (lot sizes generally 10 acres or less).