Junctional Tachycardia

Hello all!

It has been a while since I last posted... a TON has happened, and I can not remember what my last update involved. So I will just give a nutshell update before I get to the check I had today...

PM was implanted in August of 2009 when I also had open heart surgery to reconstruct my superior vena cava, which was closed to about 3mm due to scar tissue from several (read FIVE) ablation procedures. My recovery was very smooth, and at my first check I was only being paced about 1% of the time! I was healing up nicely and my cardiologist gave me the green light to exercise and to start trying to expand our family. Well, expand we did! I became pregnant just a few short months after my open heart surgery, had a fairly uneventful pregnancy, and now have an 8 month old baby girl:-)

I felt pretty good after having my daughter, and even tried to start jogging again. I quickly went from feeling 'pretty good' to 'pretty bad'; I am unable to exercise at all. My resting heart rate is great, in the 70's, but it takes next to no exertion at all for my rate to shoot up to 130's or 40's. I get winded very easily as well. Easily, as in, I get winded when singing 'The ittsy bittys spider'.

I just went in for my first check since having my daughter and the Doctor seemed very puzzled by what he was seeing. It is worth mentioning that I now live in Japan and am (obviously) seeing a Japanese doctor. The culture here is very different, and it is not like the Doctors to talk to the patients about what they are seeing or thinking.

Anyway, he said that I was having very frequent episodes of junctional tachycardia. He put a 24 hr holter monitor on me to see what exactly is going on, because he was not able to tell me much. He did do a chest x-ray, which was clear. He said something about heart failure and wants to do an echo tomorrow. I will go back next Monday for the results.

Anyone have experience with junctional tachy? Shouldn't my pacer be taking care of that as well? I know, shamefully, very little about what my medtronic adapt is capable of!

Thanks for any advice or comments! I appreciate it:-)

Glad to be back online,

Bryna

2 Comments

Junctional tachycardia

by golden_snitch - 2012-04-10 02:04:32

Hi Bryna,

I'm so happy to hear that your SVC reconstruction went well, and that you did so great afterwards that you were able to get pregnant and have a little girl. Have been wondering about you often as you might remember that I have had SVC syndrome and open-heart surgery, too.

Now, regarding the junctional tachycardia: No, the pacer can't take care of it because it's too fast, it simply overtakes the pacer and inhibits it. The pacer can only do something about bradycardia and pauses as well as insufficient rate response (chronotopic incompetence). I have atrial tachycardia and an accelerated junctional rhythm, despite the six ablation procedures I've had. Started to have arrhythmias again in 2008, seven years after my last ablation and five years after the SVC reconstruction. Been through all the anti-arrhythmic drugs available since then. My current medication is Propafenone plus a betablocker and a magnesium/potassium supplement. My EP said that since I have had so much scar tissue from the sinus node ablations, and since that had caused SVC syndrome, ablations are no longer an option. So that's why I'm taking the drugs.

I guess, if your junctional tachycardi bothers you a lot you will need a betablocker or something like this, too.
Hope this helps a bit.

Good luck!
Inga

Hi Bryna

by Pookie - 2012-04-10 09:04:39

Congrats on having a baby, must bring pure you to your life.

As far as your junctional tachycardia - let's just hope the Holter monitor picks it up and the doctor can easily fix the problem perhaps with some meds and/or some setting adjustments....I'm hoping this will work not knowing a thing about junctional tachycardia.

I had Junctional Rhythm but my EP fixed it with turning my Optimization setting OFF - it's part & parcel of my Rate Response - I have a Medtronics Enpulse.

Wishing you the very best and keep us posted.

Pookie

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