Broken collar bone on pacemaker side

I am a keen skier and fell in January breaking a bit off the top of my shoulder.This was not on my pacemaker side, but it did make me want to ask if anyone had experience - or had heard of anyone breaking their collar bone on the pacemaker side - and wether there was the possibility that that could damage the leads?
My doctor had never heard of this happening - but have any of you?

1 Comments

I like the theory questions

by Theknotguy - 2015-02-28 10:02:31

Good question. I don't know of it happening to anyone. But I think your question is on the leading edge of people having pacemakers/ICD's. i.e. there just haven't been enough people with PM's/ICD's to have this happen yet.

When you look at the population of people with PM's, they're mostly up in years and past the time they would be in activities that would result in a broken collar bone. Doesn't mean it can't happen, but less likely.

Question came up before on the forum about being in an accident that would dislodge the leads. Discussion boiled down to the accident would have to be severe and you'd probably have more problems than just a dislodged lead.

However the broken collar bone is a much more relevant question especially since we are starting to have a younger population with PM's/ICD's.

Guess the new discussion would boil down to - depends. Depends upon kind of break, how severe the accident, etc. However I'm not planning on going out and trying to find out what happens. I've already temped fate too many times and am not interested in having any close shaves in the future.

Good question for a discussion though.

You know you're wired when...

A thirty-day guarantee is not good enough.

Member Quotes

I've seen many posts about people being concerned about exercise after having a device so thought I would let you know that yesterday I raced my first marathon since having my pacemaker fitted in fall 2004.