WHAT ARE THE COMMON TREATMENTS FOR ARRHYTHMIAS?
A Anti-arrhythmic medications are mostly for tachyarrhythmias. There are dozens of drugs today to specifically treat cardiac arrhythmias, mostly to treat the fast type. Unfortunately, when a patient also has cardiomyopathy, as people with neuromuscular disorders often do, most of these drugs can be dangerous and have to be used with extreme care, if at all. Amiodarone (Cordarone), an anti-arrhythmic medication, has a good track record in people with neuromuscular disease who also have cardiomyopathy. The medications chart below lists some of the anti-arrhythmics you may encounter. Most work by blocking ion channels and thereby changing the way sodium, calcium and potassium ions flow across cell membranes in the heart. These ion flow patterns determine the heart’s rate and rhythm, but they themselves respond to many influences, notably chemicals secreted by the nervous system. Some anti-arrhythmics block these “upstream” chemical signals, while others act on the “downstream” ion channel
