WHEN CHAOS TAKES OVER HEART'S RHYTHM

INSIDE the human chest, a tireless engine performs a rhythmic masterpiece roughly one hundred thousand times a day.

- UNNIKRISHNAN S @T'Puram

If you imagine your heart as a finely tuned orchestra, every beat follows the precise baton of a rhythmic conductor, ensuring that life-sustaining blood flows in a perfect, measured cadence.

This conductor is the sinoatrial node, a tiny spark of biological electricity that initiates signals travelling from the atria, upper chambers of the heart, to the ventricles, the lower chambers. Over a lifetime, this system produces nearly 300 crore beats — perceived externally as the pulse — while the atrioventricular (AV) node acts like a sieve, regulating the surge of impulses to ensure the heart pumps with maximum efficiency.

The AV node is located in the wall between the atria, near the bottom of the right atrium. The AV node slows the signal just a little, like a traffic light, so that the atria have time to squeeze blood into the ventricles before they pump.