High Pulse rate with Newbie

Greetings from a newbie:

I got my pm- Boston Scientific model 60, with 2 leads on Tues,
11/24/2009. Yes, I am brand new and have much to learn. I have high blood pressure and heart skipping beats and low
pulse. PM hopefully solving the skipping probs, the high blood
pressure probs remain. The tech at hospital said my pm was
pacing 95% of time when first checked the morning after implant.

Last night my pulse rate (checked with good BP machine) was
hitting between 78-91 for over 3 hrs. Is this normal..I was ready
to call doc but held off; pulse 69 this morning first thing. Any
advice, suggestions or comments appreciated.

4 Comments

New is New

by roadbiker - 2009-11-28 11:11:41

I have the same BS pacemaker. Got it a month ago. I wouldn't panic about much of anything till your heart gets used to the wires stuck in the meat and your body gets used to the new hardware they left inside you. BIG new bunch of stuff to get used to. Probably you are alittle in the stressed catagory and the ticker is just abit high pumping . Things will settle in as you get out of shock mode and your body gets used to the idea of foreign invaders in it. Hang in there, you will get PLENTY of new experiences to worry about as you get the hang of living with a pacemaker. Most are just things your head wraps itsself around. Don't get spooked, relax and let the pacemaker do its job. RS

Me too

by ElectricFrank - 2009-11-28 11:11:54

Me too on the comments above and me too on rapid HR once in a while. A 91 rate isn't anything to be concerned about. One thing that does it to me for some strange reason is Mexican food together with a glass of wine. Neither alone does it. No idea why.

The skipped beats are most likely PVC's which are benign under most conditions and seem to happen after an implant.

You didn't say how high your BP is. These days with the drug companies lowering the threshold for hypertension it is common to have a doc diagnose 130/80 as high blood pressure. For years 140/90 was considered OK. Also, yours could be elevated from the implant issues mentioned by the others.

good luck and keep us posted

frank

A week older than you

by bluelyon - 2009-11-28 12:11:22

It looks like we got the same pm model (dual chamber) within a week of each other. My pm was pacing 81% of the time time morning after and at my one week check up it was down to 54%. Makes sense as my low heart rate really kicks in when I'm asleep.

I'm with roadbiker. Allow yourself time to come to terms with your pm. At first I was very conscious of every heartbeat, but now that I'm more than a week out, I'm starting to (just barely) forget about this little puppy under my clavicle. Except for the tightness and feeling like I've been socked in the chest, I feel good, really good, and it's hard to not want to go full throttle all the time. I have to remind myself that I'm still healing.

pacing

by Tracey_E - 2009-11-30 06:11:21

You don't mention why you got the pm but it sounds like maybe av block? If that's the case, then your atria, which contains the sinus node which sets our heart rate, was trying to beat faster but the signal wasn't getting through to the ventricle to beat faster so your pulse was low even though your heart was trying to go faster. Now that you have the pm, every time the atria beats, it watches to see if the ventricles beat at the same time. When they don't, the pm steps in and generates a beat. My hr was 40's before I got my pm, hasn't been under 80 since.

If you feel ok, it's best to not sit around checking your bp and pulse all the time. Trust the pm to do its job and only check it when you have symptoms. It can take some time for the higher hr to feel normal.

Generally, a pm won't have much effect on bp, and there are no particular settings that will raise it/lower it. All a pm can do is generate beats.

You know you're wired when...

You run like the bionic man.

Member Quotes

Just because you have a device doesn't mean you are damaged goods and can't do anything worthwhile and have to lie down and die. In fact, you're better and stronger. You're bionic!