Pacemaker Club: Cardiac Rehab

Cardiac Rehab

by sonya
2011-07-17 11:07:37
ICDs
1764 views
2 comments

I have posted several times on this site and got back very good responses. My cardiologist called me on my vacation and his also on a Saturday and told me that my pulmonary stress test nunumbs was low and he wanted to try a few things. #1 He wanted to start me on Cardio Exercises at hospital, make changes with my CRT-D, change my meds completely and see if I qualify for a International Cardiac Study. I am 44 with an EF of around 25%. he says I am one of the few that the device is not helping, but yet he hasn't done an echo in 6 months. My EF has went up a little each time. I have had people tell me it could take a while for the heart muscle to get stronger. Any advice or similarities? He also says I have a spot on my lung,but nothing to worry about. Really? I can't help for worrying. Any advice or comment would be appreciated.

2 Comments

Low EF

by fishfighter - 2011-07-18 07:07:37

I had my CRT-D implanted last april. My EF hasn't come up. I'm still below 20%. My doctor wants the PM to run 100 % of the time, but its only doing 90% on the time. To get my PM at 90%, I had to start taking Tinksyn to slow my heart down. My heart would just take off to the races if I would just move a little bit.

I'm now having more better days then bad days. I was a very active person before I had heart damage from a viro infection. I am now walking just over 2.5 miles every day at a fast pace. Problem with that is my high rate for the PM is set at 110. The tech will incress it in time. In fact it will be done on the 26th of this month.

Oh, I'm 53 years old, 6' tall and weight in at 185. I was up to 192, but got that down now. I'm looking to get back down to 175-178. The weight I was before I got sick last Nov.

CRT-D

by sonya - 2011-07-20 03:07:01

Thanks to everyone for their comments. I felt like I finally had a productive trip to my Cardiologist today. He had a St.Jude Rep come to the clinic today and work with him on my shortness of breath. After a couple hours of optimization the St.Jude Rep realized the auto settings of the CRT-D was not right. So they done an Echo and hooked me to the pacemaker machine at the same time and kept re-adjusting and making me walk up and down the hall until I was not as short of breath. I do feel better tonight. They basically said the machine settings has not been set right until today. They said basically my heart was pretty much doing all the work. I was so happy when the Cardiologist said he did see some improvement. My EF increased a little more. It should improve more now. The next step is to run another lead. He is starting me on Cardio exercises at the hospital next week. He said that I may have to go to Europe for a procedure that the USA doesn't do right now, but he said he wants to see how I do with these manual settings. Thanks to all.