To find out whether you have supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), your health care professional will ask you questions about your symptoms. These questions might include:
- What, if anything, triggers your fast heart rate?
- What symptoms do you feel? Do they come on slowly or quickly? How long do they last?
- Do your heartbeats feel regular or uneven?
- Does anyone in your family have heart problems?
Your health care professional will do a complete physical examination and order some tests. Those may include:
- An electrocardiogram (ECG): Small electrodes are attached to your body to record electrical signals from your heart; if you are in SVT, the machine will be able to measure it.
- Blood tests.
- An echocardiogram: A test that uses sound waves to make images of your heart.
If you do not have an episode of SVT during your health visit, you may be given an electrocardiogram that you can wear at home. You may be asked to wear:
- A Holter monitor: This is a small ECG that records your heart's electrical activity for 24-48 hours (or more for newer models).
- An event monitor: You can wear this for longer than a Holter monitor and press a button when you feel symptoms. The monitor will record details for the next few minutes while you're feeling the fast heart rate. You may be asked to wear this for days or weeks depending on how frequently you have symptoms.
Your health care professional may want to perform an electrophysiology (EP) study to determine what type of SVT you have and what is causing it. This test is performed in the hospital. You will be sedated and catheters are passed through your veins into your heart. Your doctor can look at different sections of your heart and monitor the electrical signals during the EP study.