Abstract
Most patients with hiatal hernia (HH) are asymptomatic; however, common symptoms include
gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and heart burn. Larger hernia can cause obstruction,
ischemia of the bowel, volvulus of the contents of the hernial sac, respiratory distress,
and rarely, cardiac abnormalities are also noted. Most reported cardiac abnormalities
associated with HH include atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, supraventricular tachycardia,
and bradycardia. We present a rare case of a large HH causing frequent premature ventricular
contractions in bigeminy form that resolved with surgical correction of HH and did
not recur on subsequent Holter monitoring. We highlight the potential association
between HH/GERD and cardiac arrhythmias and reinforce the need to keep HH/GERD as
one of the working diagnoses in a patient with cardiac arrhythmia.
Learning objective
- •Large hiatal hernia can cause several arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, supraventricular tachycardia, bradycardia, and premature ventricular contractions (PVCs).
- •It is essential to consider hiatal hernia and gastroesophageal reflux disease as one of the differentials in the work up of cardiac arrhythmias including PVCs.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 17, 2023
Accepted:
March 1,
2023
Received in revised form:
February 18,
2023
Received:
November 18,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2023 Japanese College of Cardiology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.