Everything you wanted to know

• by RobertS
• 2013-01-28 09:01:15
• General Posting
• 929 views
• 3 comments

about ICDs - well almost.

I came across a book: ‘Understanding Your Pacemaker and Defibrillator ‘ by David Hayes MD, Rebecca Fallon MS and Matthew Noble BS. Hayes is a Cardiac Consultant at the Mayo Clinic, Fallon is a Psychologist working for a device maker and Noble has had a pm since he was 17 and is a tech for a device maker.

Published in the US in 2012 and designed for patients and their families, it’s well written and not too technical. It explains heart function and abnormalities, types of devices, the implant procedures, follow up, complications, living with a device and so on. Answers most of the questions we newbies and our families ask about all the time on this site like driving, the pm settings and the check-up procedures and it is good on coping and learning to trust the device as well as some of the common more technical stuff like impedance and thresholds. I’d recommend it if you can get hold of a copy. If you want more details just PM me.

But it also says that over there in the US of A, the device manufacturers have a toll free patient help phone line and are only too pleased to talk to and advise their ‘customers’. Is this really the case?

I have Medtronic pm but a check of the UK website shows no patient contact number. I’m thinking of emailing them and asking but has anyone in UK ever had direct contact with their pm maker?

Robert