help me understand please

Hi everyone,
I have not been "on" for quite a while and lots of things happend. I feel like a guinea pig because of "trying out" re-adjusting my pacemaker. I seem to be wired differently (literally) because the doc could not find the venes where they were supposed to be. took over 3 hours to put the "generator" in. Anyway, does anyone know how I can find out how my own little heart is doing? Had an ablation, so 3rd heart block, 100% paced in my ventricle, 91% in the atrium. so my heart is "working" 9%. When an ECG is done, does my heartbeat show up or does it only trace the pacer? HOw do I know that my heart is healthy? are they tests? I am confused, am I confusing you?
thanks, guys, any clarification would be helping. When I ask the doc about this, I get conflicting answers.
veronica

1 Comments

A few answers

by ElectricFrank - 2012-11-04 01:11:29

As long as they are using a modern ECG machine it will sort out the heart and pacemaker signals. In most cases the biological heart trace is the actual electrical signal. The pacemaker is usually senses and then a marker added to the trace.

About the only way to see what your heart is doing without pacer support is to turn off the pacer for a few seconds. In some cases this can be done safely in an office visit, but generally they would rather have you in a hospital setting in case the test triggered some arrhythmia. I have 100% AV block and wondered what would happen if the pacer malfunctioned when I was out in one of my desert camping trips. I asked the Medtronic rep to trigger it off while I was sitting in a chair in the office. My HR dropped to about 30, but I didn't have any sign of passing out. I then asked for an additional challenge where he again stopped pacing and I suddenly stood up. Still no problem. When he ran the last test a nurse came in to help me sit down if I started getting light headed.

Actually, though the usual way to evaluate your hearts condition is an echo cardiogram plus possibly a chemical stress test.

frank

You know you're wired when...

You can hear your heartbeat in your cell phone.

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