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Often this is nothing to worry about unless it is happening thousands of times per day and either affecting the strength of the heart or just driving the person crazy. Therefore, a thorough evaluation should be done by a qualified physician to determine if any treatment is necessary. It may be totally benign, or it may be a marker of disease. Sometimes people don’t feel it at all, and other times it drives people crazy. This may happen only occasionally or may happen thousands of times per day and may be described as heart flutter. This may result in the feeling of a skipped beat or a hard beat in the chest. You can imagine that if an electrical wave has already begun in the atria, that the two waves may collide somewhere out in the heart and cause some uncoordinated contractions where the ventricles and atria attempt to contract at the same time and fight against each other. Sometimes, a small area of cells in the ventricle may begin to behave erratically for a number of different reasons, and give rise to an electrical wave starting in the ventricles. One of the most common reasons for this sensation resulting in the feeling of heart flutter is the often benign arrhythmia known as premature ventricular contractions, or PVCs. Common Causes of Heart Flutter Symptoms Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCs) There are many other less common arrhythmias which will not be discussed here, but could be responsible for your symptoms. Below, we will discuss some of the common arrhythmias which may be responsible for these symptoms. If this electrical wave gets out of whack for any reason, it is very common for us to take notice and describe a feeling of heart flutter. This perfectly timed electrical wave causes the atria of the heart to contract first, so that blood is pumped from the upper chambers to the lower chambers, and then the ventricles contract after they are filled so the blood is pumped out to the body. After a short delay of this electrical wave in clump of cells known as the atrio-ventricular node, or AV node, the electrical wave then spreads across the lower chambers of the heart, known as the ventricles. Normally, a coordinated electrical wave arises from the natural pacemaker known as the sino-atrial node (SA node) which is located in the upper chambers of the heart, known as the atria. The heart is an electro-mechanical organ. In order to understand what may be causing the problem, you need to understand a little bit about how the heart normally works. It is important to understand that heart flutter does not refer to a specific problem, rather it refers to a symptom that a person may experience. What exactly is happening to my heart during heart flutter? Depending on the cause and the health of the person, there may be associated symptoms including shortness of breath, dizziness, chest pain, sweating, tunnel vision, or headaches, among others. Often times people have difficulty describing the sensation of heart flutter. The sensation of heart flutter may fit several descriptions including hard beats, fast beats, irregular beats, skipped beats, fluttering sensation, pauses, flip-flopping and may be intermittent or continuous. What is that feeling of heart flutter in my chest? The medical term for heart flutter or fluttering heart is palpitations. Heart flutter is a nonspecific term often used by people when describing an abnormal sensation in their chest that may refer to one of several conditions which may be benign or may be concerning, including premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), premature atrial contractions (PACs), heart block, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, ventricular tachycardia, POTS, or muscle spasms in the chest among others.