Bas AF and sleep apnea!

I had my PM inserted on Jan 28 2013......I have never felt better until a week ago I had a massive AF attack at 2.30am. Of my own accord I bought a Polar heart rate monitor which recorded a high pulse rate of 243 bpm's and a low rate of 20. A hospital visit as normal with the outcome a visit to my specialist. The technician downloaded the pacemaker info which said I only had a high pulse of 140 and that the pacemaker does not record the low reading! He indicated the Polar monitor was incorrect grrrrrrr. I said, well it felt like a concrete truck was driving through my chest.....I could tell it was a-fib and that if it was 140 I would hardly feel anything. The outcome is that the doc thinks I might have sleep apnea, so a test is scheduled for this Tuesday night.Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
Cheers
Bas

2 Comments

sleep apnea/cardiovascular issues

by Hope - 2013-03-30 03:03:03

Hi! If you have the symptoms of sleep apnea, a sleep study is very important. Though studies as of yet cannot precisely determine the correlation between sleep disorders and heart issues, it is established that sleep disorders have a negative effect on the cardiovascular system. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense that in sleep apnea when the person has pauses in breathig, it is detrimental. I am a heart patient with no sleep disorder. My husband has had surgery for severe sleep apnea, but he has no known heart issues. With that said, until medical science makes more progress, it seems if a person is diagnosed with sleep apnea, he/she should seekthe needed corrective treatment/surgery as soon as possible for cardiovascular health. Also, sleep apnea has a.negative effect on job performance, safe driving ability, etc.. Hopeful Heart

monitors

by Tracey_E - 2013-03-30 07:03:48

Monitors are notoriously inaccurate for us. They pick up pm spikes as well as heart beats so they can count too high, or the pm can interfere so they count too low. If your leads are capturing (aka in place) and the pm is pacing the interrogation would show immediately so you can assume you were not more than a beat or two below your minimum rate.

The way I understand it, the pm never records your pulse per se, only when we pace. It's not like an ekg catching every beat. If the heart beats normally, it just watches. Any time the heart misses a beat, goes too slowly, the atria beats but the ventricle does not, then it kicks in with a beat, which is recorded. If this happens again, a Holter monitor might tell you more.

Many people with heart problems have sleep apnea. The connection is unclear, but it's pretty common to have both.

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