Depending on the seriousness of your condition, your doctor may simply recommend maneuvers or medications to correct your irregular heartbeat. It's also possible you'll need a medical device or surgery if your condition is more serious.

• * Vagal maneuvers. You may be able to stop some heart arrhythmias by using particular maneuvers, which include holding your breath and straining, dunking your face in ice water, or coughing. Your doctor may be able to recommend other maneuvers to slow a fast heartbeat. These maneuvers affect the nervous system that controls your heartbeat (vagal nerves), often causing your heart rate to slow. Don't attempt any maneuvers without talking to your doctor first.
• * Medications. People who have a rapid heartbeat may respond well to anti-arrhythmic medications. Though they don't cure the problem, they can reduce episodes of your heart beating rapidly or slow down the heart when an episode occurs. Some medications can slow down your heart so much that you may need a pacemaker. It's important to take any anti-arrhythmic medication exactly as directed by your doctor in order to avoid complications.
• * Medical procedures. Two common procedures to treat heart arrhythmias are cardioversion and cardiac ablation. In cardioversion, an electrical shock is used to reset your heart to its regular rhythm. Usually this is done with paddles, placed on the chest, that can deliver an electrical shock in a monitored setting. You're given medication to sedate you during the procedure, so there's no pain involved. In cardiac ablation, one or more catheters are threaded through your blood vessels to your inner heart. They're positioned on areas of your heart identified by your doctor as causing your arrhythmia. Electrodes at the catheter tips destroy (ablate) a small spot of heart tissue and create an electrical block along the pathway that's causing your arrhythmia.
• * Pacemakers or implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs). In some cases, your doctor may recommend having a pacemaker or ICD implanted to regulate your heartbeat. Pacemakers emit electrical impulses to quicken your heartbeat if it becomes too slow, and ICDs can correct a rapid or chaotic heartbeat using a similar type of electrical impulse as is used in cardioversion. The surgery to implant each device is relatively minor, and usually requires only a few days of recovery.
• * Surgery. For severe heart arrhythmias, or for those with an underlying cause such as a heart defect, surgery may be an option. Because the surgeries to correct heart arrhythmias are open-heart procedures that sometimes require several months for recovery, surgery is often a last-resort treatment option.