Heartbeat, or heart rate, is a measurement of how many times your heart pumps blood to your body each minute. Children below the age of 10 have heart rates that are slower than rates for adults and children over 10. The normal heart rate for younger children also varies according to specific age.
Normal Rates
You can only measure normal, or resting, heart rate in an individual who has been physically inactive for 10 minutes or more, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine's Medline Plus. Rates are commonly estimated by taking a pulse reading at points where arterial blood flows close to the surface of your skin. If you have a child aged 10 or older, normal resting heart rates range from 60 to 100 beats per minute. If you have a child between the ages of 1 and 10, normal resting rates range from 70 to 120 beats per minute. Normal resting heart rates in infants range from 100 to 160 beats per minute.
Heart Rate Factors
In addition to age, your child's resting heart rate may vary according to his level of physical activity and fitness, reports Kid's Health, a website sponsored by the Nemours Foundation. The Mayo Clinic lists additional factors in an individual's heart rate that include body size, body position, medication usage, emotional state and local air temperature. If your child has a resting heart rate consistently above normal, he may have a condition called tachycardia. If your child has a resting heart rate consistently below normal, he may have a condition called bradycardia.
Tachycardia
Tachycardia may originate in the upper or lower chambers of your child's heart, according to Kids Health. The most common form of the condition---called supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT---occurs when rapid heartbeats develop in the upper chambers, called atria, or in the cells that conduct heartbeat signals from the atria to the lower heart. In Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, tachycardia results from the development of abnormal signaling pathways between your child's upper and lower heart. In the dangerous but relatively rare condition called ventricular tachycardia, abnormally rapid beats originate in the powerful ventricles that form the lower heart.
Bradycardia
Kids Health lists causes of bradycardia that include heart block and sick sinus syndrome. In sick sinus syndrome, your child experiences abnormalities in or near the sinus node, a specialized group of cells in the upper heart that normally controls the heartbeat. In heart block, electrical signals from the sinus node do not pass properly to the lower heart. As a result, the lower heart tries unsuccessfully to compensate and keep the heart beating normally. Underlying causes of heart block include injury, disease and birth defects.
Diagnosis and Treatment
Doctors investigate child heart rate problems with varying forms of a testing procedure called an electrocardiogram, or EKG, which measures the heart's electrical function, Kids Health explains. Potential treatments for heart rate irregularities include medications, internal pacemakers to increase a slow heartbeat, internal defibrillators to control a rapid heartbeat, surgery and elimination of damaged heart muscle cells through a procedure called catheter ablation.
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