Fainting / Syncope

Syncope (fainting) is a common although disturbing experience. It is the sudden transient loss of consciousness with loss of postural tone caused by impaired blood flow to the central nervous system. Recovery is usually spontaneous when lying down. Syncope may occur even while lying down or standing upright and under a wide variety of conditions. It may be due to medication, cardiac disease (usually arrhythmia), or severe impairment of cardiac blood flow by mechanical pump failure or obstruction. It may be due to transient impairment of central nervous system function as in a transient ischemic attack TIA, but this is less common. Although convulsive like movements may occur during fainting, it is distinct from a seizure disorder.

Cardiac syncope is often quite serious and should be regarded as life threatening. When specific cardiac disease is found, it is treated specifically. However, the large majority of exercise related syncope cases are non cardiogenic in origin, at least for children and adolescents.

Approximately 90% of syncope in children is either neurocardiogenic (also known as vasovagal syncope) or unexplained. Often the unexplained variety is reclassified as neurocardiogenic once tilt table testing has been performed. Neurocardiogenic is the current term for fainting mediated through a combination of inappropriate vascular (blood vessel) and heart rate control. Almost all of neurocardiogenic syncope in children can be deemed vasovagal (‘vaso’ denoting widening of blood vessels, and ‘vagal’ slowing of the heart rate through stimulation of the vagus nerve). On the other hand, adult syncope is much more likely to be cardiogenic, about 50% of the time. Since vasovagal syncope almost always occurs in the upright position, which may sometimes include sitting, it is regarded as a form of orthostatic intolerance.

Orthostatic intolerance can be defined as the development of symptoms during upright standing relieved by recumbency. Most of us have experienced some lightheadedness at one time or another when rising suddenly. A little further loss of blood pressure and fainting would occur. Many patients have no intercurrent illness, meaning that between faints they are well.

However, chronic orthostatic intolerance also occurs and may be confused with syncope because chronic illness can be punctuated by acute fainting episodes. Defining symptoms of chronic orthostatic intolerance include dizziness in all patients with a high incidence of altered vision (blurred, ‘white outs’, ‘black outs’), fatigue, nausea and palpitations. A large fraction of patients also experience headache, tremulousness, difficulty breathing or swallowing, sweating, pallor, and other vasomotor symptoms.

Standing up requires rapid and effective circulatory and neurologic compensation in order to maintain blood pressure and consciousness. The primary defense against blood pooling in the lower extremities is leg muscle contraction which propels venous blood back to the heart. The muscle pump is also partly defeated during quiet standing and is nearly completely defeated while standing without motion. The second line of defense against orthostatic intolerance is neurovascular adjustment which includes rapid vasoconstriction which limits blood flow to the extremities and other organs.

While systolic blood pressure normally does not fall and diastolic blood pressure often rises, cardiac output decreases an estimated 25% due to impaired heart filling which is only partially offset by an increase in heart rate. There is even a normal decrease in cerebral blood flow because cerebrovascular autoregulatory mechanisms at their limit.

Patterns of orthostatic intolerance are best defined by an orthostatic stress test. Due to the difficulty of monitoring patients by simple means, the standard of orthostatic assessment is the head up tilt table test. This device consists of a table driven by an electrical motor with a supportive footboard enabling positioning of a patient at varying angles of upright tilt. Following a resting period, the patients are placed upright and their response over a period of tilt is assessed. This is usually anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes. At a minimum, blood pressure and continuous electrocardiography are assessed.

The central purpose of a tilt table test is to reproduce symptoms of orthostatic intolerance in a setting in which blood pressure, heart rate and blood flow can be assessed. Most often there is correlation with changing physiological signs, but the definition of orthostatic intolerance requires symptoms. Thus for example the incidence of false positive faints during head up tilt is high. If the complaining symptoms are not reproduced but the patient has a simple faint, the test is judged as negative.

The normal response to head up tilt is a modest increase in heart rate (10 to 20 beats/min) without a fall in systolic blood pressure. Abnormal tilt test responses can be used to categorize patterns of orthostatic intolerance. The overall patient assessment of chronicity and severity of impairment should be combined with these data to reach any conclusion concerning the nature of orthostatic intolerance in a particular patient. In addition to the normal pattern, three typical patterns of orthostatic intolerance are depicted in the figure, which shows the systolic blood pressure and heart rate in patients during tilt.

Classic simple faint (Vasovagal Syncope)

Typically patients easily tolerate the early parts of tilt with little change in blood pressure or sensation. Following a variable period of time i.e. on the order of 7 to 20 minutes, patients develop orthostatic symptoms of nausea, dizziness, heat, heavy breathing, and sweatiness associated most commonly with a small initial slow fall in blood pressure. In short order there is an abrupt drop in blood pressure and heart rate. The early fall in blood pressure is coincident with a decrease in vasoconstriction (the peripheral arteries vasodilate) which normally occurs as part of the neurovascular compensation required to maintain blood pressure with orthostasis. Blood pressure and heart rate may plummet precipitously, and asystole may occur. When this happens there is a rapid loss of central nervous system activity and often a dysinhibition of peripheral neurologic responses resulting in muscular movements mimicking a tonic clonic seizure. This is denoted “convulsive syncope”.

Fainting usually is short lived; upon assuming recumbence the patient usually awakes after a few seconds. But some patients do not awake immediately and prolonged sleep like states have occurred. A patient persistently maintained upright in a severe simple faint can potentially die. Patients should be placed supine or allowed to fall to a recumbent position. Recumbence invariably resolves all symptoms and signs.

There are several theories as to the mechanisms for the vasovagal faint, best left for discussion elsewhere. Without a clear mechanism there is no clear treatment. Moreover, many patients with infrequent simple faints, who do not injure themselves and who do not have convulsive syncope, may require no specific therapy above training in aversive maneuvers. The simplest of these maneuvers is lying down although leg crossing, bending at the waist, squatting and other maneuvers may also be effective.

In terms of medication, often beta1 blockade works well. Other possible medications include fludrocortisone (florinef), which retains sodium and water at the expense of small potassium wasting and has little if any corticosteroid side effects. In addition to its other actions, florinef may aid in sensitizing alpha receptors and blocking vasodilation. A new, direct acting alpha1 agonist, midodrine (proamatine) has been used to good effect in many patients with assorted forms of orthostatic intolerance. Other agents have included alpha2 adrenergic agents (both clonidine and its obverse yohimbine) which have been used in select patients. Recently, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) have been used to good effect in a variety of orthostatic disabilities. These seem to interfere with hypotensive responses at a central level.

Dysautonomic Orthostatic Intolerance

Included in this group are patients with true “orthostatic hypotension” defined by the American Autonomic Society to be a persistent fall in systolic blood pressure of >25 mm Hg within 3 minutes of assuming the upright position. This group harbors patients with autonomic failure. Autonomic failure includes primary forms such as primary autonomic failure and multiple system atrophy, and more common secondary forms occurring with Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.

Dysautonomia may also be drug induced. Pediatric causes are rare and include familial dysautonomia. Acute forms may occur during infectious and inflammatory diseases or be related to peripheral nerve disease, e.g. Guillian Barre syndrome.

Using standard tests of circulatory autonomic function such as timed breathing and the quantitative Valsalva maneuver patients show signs of circulatory autonomic dysfunction. Also other manifestations of dysautonomia are present including pupillary, gastrointestinal, and sweating abnormalities. Neurological damage such as occurs in cerebral palsy, trauma, etc may result in some autonomic dysfunction in addition to other neurologic disability. Blood pressure falls while there is no significant change in heart rate throughout the course of the tilt. The appropriate response of the arterial baroreflex to hypotension is increased heart rate, which fails to occur in these illnesses. Patients may be so brittle that they are hypertensive (high blood pressure) lying down, hypotensive upright, and lose consciousness due to overzealous venous pooling in the splenic tissues after every heavy meal.

Specific therapy for chronic disease is largely experimental and acute therapy for acute illness remains specific for the specific disease.

Chronic Orthostatic Intolerance and the Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

The orthostatic tachycardia syndrome is a disabling disease state described at least since 1940 and is the most common reason for referral for orthostatic intolerance in adults. It is an emerging form of orthostatic intolerance in children. Patients have day to day disability, a feature not shared with those with simple faint. With some exception, traditional tests of autonomic function are normal in these patients. The understanding of its pathophysiology remains incomplete.

The central physical finding is upright tachycardia although hypotension and resting tachycardia may also be present. An operational definition of the syndrome (also denoted by the acronym POTS for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) includes symptoms of orthostatic intolerance associated with an increase in heart rate from the supine to upright position of more than 30 beats per minute or to a heart rate greater than 120 beats per minute within 10 minutes of head up tilt.
Hypotension may follow or occur with tachycardia. Often it is delayed beyond the onset of the symptoms and of the tachycardia, and therefore only shows up during the artificially sustained orthostasis enforced during head up tilt.

Onset of symptoms often follows an infectious disease and may be related to inflammatory mediators. POTS physiology underlies orthostatic intolerance in the large majority of adolescents with the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). POTS is common, affecting an undisclosed number of patients mostly in the age range of 12 to 50 years, mostly female (approximately 80%). There is an as yet undetermined but increasing prevalence in children and adolescents. Patients with the syndrome display an unusual amount of pooling in the lower extremities often associated with acrocyanosis.

Conventional medicine uses some of the medications mentioned in the vasovagal section. Of these florinef and midodrine seem to be most effective with an emerging use of SSRI’s. Beta blockers and clonidine are rarely tolerated and may point to a very different origin for Chronic Orthostatic Intolerance from syncope.

 


Signs, symptoms & indicators of Fainting / Syncope

Symptoms - General  

Absence of fainting




Risk factors for Fainting / Syncope

Hormones  


Infections  



Recommendations for Fainting / Syncope

Habits  

Weight Training

Lower body exercise, particularly isometric exercise or weight training, can be a genuine help by enhancing the muscle pump and by increasing venous tone in the lower extremities.



Mineral  

Increased Salt Consumption

Natural treatments are limited, but could include increased fluid and salt intake to improve low blood pressure.



Physical Medicine  

Physical Supports

Elastic support hose can be useful in some cases.



Key

Weak or unproven link
Strong or generally accepted link
Very strongly or absolutely counter-indicative
May do some good

Glossary

Nervous System

A system in the body that is comprised of the brain, spinal cord, nerves, ganglia and parts of the receptor organs that receive and interpret stimuli and transmit impulses to effector organs.

Cardiac

Pertaining to the heart, also, pertaining to the stomach area adjacent to the esophagus.

Arrhythmia

A condition caused by variation in the regular rhythm of the heartbeat. Arrhythmias may cause serious conditions such as shock and congestive heart failure, or even death.

Ischemia

Localized tissue anemia due to obstruction of the inflow of arterial blood.

Seizure

While there are over 40 types of seizure, most are classed as either partial seizures which occur when the excessive electrical activity in the brain is limited to one area or generalized seizures which occur when the excessive electrical activity in the brain encompasses the entire organ. Although there is a wide range of signs, they mainly include such things as falling to the ground; muscle stiffening; jerking and twitching; loss of consciousness; an empty stare; rapid chewing/blinking/breathing. Usually lasting from between a couple of seconds and several minutes, recovery may be immediate or take up to several days.

Chronic

Usually Chronic illness: Illness extending over a long period of time.

Acute

An illness or symptom of sudden onset, which generally has a short duration.

Nausea

Symptoms resulting from an inclination to vomit.

Vasoconstriction

A narrowing of any blood vessel, especially the arterioles and the veins in the blood reservoirs of the skin and the abdominal viscera.

Systolic

Pertaining to the contraction phase of the heartbeat, or the pressure in the arterial system caused by the heart as blood is being pumped out. When used in blood pressure readings (for example 120/80), it refers to the first/upper number.

Diastolic

Pertaining to the relaxation phase of the heartbeat, or period when the heart muscle is resting and filling with blood. When used in blood pressure readings (for example 120/80), it refers to the second/lower number.

Clonic

Form of movement marked by contractions and relaxations of a muscle, occurring in rapid succession.

Sodium

An essential mineral that our bodies regulate and conserve. Excess sodium retention increases the fluid volume (edema) and low sodium leads to less fluid and relative dehydration. The adult body averages a total content of over 100 grams of sodium, of which a surprising one-third is in bone. A small amount of sodium does get into cell interiors, but this represents only about ten percent of the body content. The remaining 57 percent or so of the body sodium content is in the fluid immediately surrounding the cells, where it is the major cation (positive ion). The role of sodium in the extracellular fluid is maintaining osmotic equilibrium (the proper difference in ions dissolved in the fluids inside and outside the cell) and extracellular fluid volume. Sodium is also involved in nerve impulse transmission, muscle tone and nutrient transport. All of these functions are interrelated with potassium.

Potassium

A mineral that serves as an electrolyte and is involved in the balance of fluid within the body. Our bodies contain more than twice as much potassium as sodium (typically 9oz versus 4oz). About 98% of total body potassium is inside our cells. Potassium is the principal cation (positive ion) of the fluid within cells and is important in controlling the activity of the heart, muscles, nervous system and just about every cell in the body. Potassium regulates the water balance and acid-base balance in the blood and tissues. Evidence is showing that potassium is also involved in bone calcification. Potassium is a cofactor in many reactions, especially those involving energy production and muscle building.

Corticosteroid

Steroid hormone produced by the adrenal cortex.

Vasodilation

Widening or enlarging of blood vessels, particularly arterioles, usually caused by nerve impulses or certain drugs that relax smooth muscle in the walls of the blood vessels.

Serotonin

A phenolic amine neurotransmitter (C10H12N2O) that is a powerful vasoconstrictor and is found especially in the brain, blood serum and gastric membranes of mammals. Considered essential for relaxation, sleep, and concentration.

Hypotension

Low blood pressure.

Millimeter

(mm): A metric unit of length equaling one thousandth of a meter, or one tenth of a centimeter. There are 25.4 millimeters in one inch.

Hg

The chemical symbol for mercury, often used to indicate pressure measurements in either inches or millimeters.

Diabetes Mellitus

A disease with increased blood glucose levels due to lack or ineffectiveness of insulin. Diabetes is found in two forms; insulin-dependent diabetes (juvenile-onset) and non-insulin-dependent (adult-onset). Symptoms include increased thirst; increased urination; weight loss in spite of increased appetite; fatigue; nausea; vomiting; frequent infections including bladder, vaginal, and skin; blurred vision; impotence in men; bad breath; cessation of menses; diminished skin fullness. Other symptoms include bleeding gums; ear noise/buzzing; diarrhea; depression; confusion.

Gastrointestinal

Pertaining to the stomach, small and large intestines, colon, rectum, liver, pancreas, and gallbladder.

Tachycardia

Excessively rapid heart rate.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) is a disorder of unknown cause that lasts for prolonged periods and causes extreme and debilitating exhaustion as well as a wide range of other symptoms such as fever, headache, muscle ache and joint pain, often resembling flu and other viral infections. Also known as Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus (CEBV), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), "Yuppy Flu" and other names, it is frequently misdiagnosed as hypochondria, psychosomatic illness, or depression, because routine medical tests do not detect any problems.

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