across the miles

My mom is mid 70’s and up until now very active physically until she passed out raking leaves in October. A holter monitor showed that her heart would stop beating for numerous seconds, so they put in the pacemaker.  She just had her first followup with the pacemaker rep after pacemaker surgery. She has been experiencing rapid heartbeats when doing anything physical. They made a few adjustments and she came home and felt good the next two days. Now she is feeling very tired, with a heaviness in her chest, and very sluggish physically and mentally. I live 600 miles away and just got off the phone with her, and am very concerned. She spoke with the cardiologist this afternoon, who wants to do an ECG to check for blockage. Did they adjust it incorrectly?

1 Comments

Pacemaker Settings

by SMITTY - 2011-02-10 09:02:49

Hello Laurie,

It is entirely possible the settings for the pacemaker are not the optimum ones for your mother. However, while this does not happen often it is not uncommon for it to take more than one adjustments to get the best ones for a patient. While they have very sophisticated instruments to help make the adjustments, in reality it is trial and error. The feeling good right after settings are changed only to have it go downhill a day or two later does happen and I will not even try to guess why. I know because it happened to me after the first adjustment on my first PM.

As for the rapid heart beat when doing anything physical that could be due to a pacemaker feature called Rate Response. It is activated by body movement and has its own settings. If that is the cause of the rapid heart beats it can be corrected.

My suggestion is that she see her doctor. But before doing so, since she has several different symptoms, she should make a list of them so that none are overlooked when asked about her problem.

I will add the blockage the Dr is taking about is likely to be blockage in the hearts natural electrical system and not artery blockage with can call for heart surgery. Our heart has its own electrical system to supply the impulses to make our heart beat. It is an interruption of the impulses from that system that causes most of us to need a pacemaker. The ECG is the most common diagnostic tool for checking on this problem.

I wish your mother the best,

Smitty

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