Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT)

For the treatment of stable supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) amiodarone is recommended in a dose of 150 mg IV. What differentiates stable from unstabel SVT? Blood pressure for one. If your patient has a systolic blood pressure of less than 80 mmHg that would be considered unstable. Also the presence of chest pain would be another unstable factor. If your patient has unstable SVT, remember the treatment is elctrocardioversion. A common pitfall is that once you have cardioverted your patient people often fail to bolus and start the patient on an anti-arrhythmic drug. What often will happen then is the heart rhythm will then degenerate back to the original arrhythmia.