Nutritional deficiencies are common in
adolescent children and include deficiencies of both micro- and
macronutrients.
Magnesium is an important
mineral that is essential for
maintenance of numerous electrophysiological and
biochemical processes in the body. We
report an
adolescent girl who developed an episode of
syncope with first degree
heart block on
electrocardiography and run of multifocal atrial ectopics on 24 h
holter monitoring.
Serum magnesium was found to be low with decreased urinary
magnesium excretion. There were no other
electrolyte abnormalities. Structural
heart disease was ruled out by a normal echocardiogram. The rhythm changes were attributable to nutritional hypomagnesemia and were promptly reversed on correcting the hypomagnesemia