Even With PM Sometimes Feel Slow Pulse

I got my Pacer the week before Christmas 2013. The first month I was having a hard time coping mentally but that all came to pass. I have had some PVC's but not often. Recently, when sitting, I have felt my pulse slow. When I took it with Pulse Ox it was 37. My PM is set to 60-145. Does the Pacer turn itself off and then back on? Those episodes only last a minute or so. I am 100% Pacer reliant according to Medtronics.

3 Comments

Call Your Doc

by NiceNiecey - 2014-04-22 11:04:40

Your heart rate shouldn't be that slow, especially set at 60 BPM on the low end. The PM, as I understand it, allows your heart to skip just one beat before it takes over. Since you're paced 100% of the time, I suppose you don't skip ANY beats but someone else needs to help me out here.

As far as turning itself off and on, let's just say it's ALWAYS on duty, ready for action. Call the office and see what's up. One thing I've learned is that mechanical equipment such as electronic BP cuffs and probably Pulse Ox too, are not necessarily accurate. I brought in a neat BP cuff that attaches to my iPad and had the cardiologist's office check it. It was waaayyyyy off. It had my pulse correct but not the BP. The techs in the office said they got rid of theirs because in people with irregular heart beats, like those of us with PMs, they just don't work.

I am not saying that YOUR Pulse Ox isn't accurate or isn't working; it's a pretty simple piece of equipment. I'm just urging caution about putting too much stock in it without calling your doctor's office. They can see everything that's happening to you when they interrogate your device. Just ask.

All the best,
Niecey

The pacemaker is on

by Gotrhythm - 2014-04-23 01:04:44

Theoretically, a pulse of 37 isn't possible if the pacemaker is set at 60, but I've observed the same phenomenon you have.

When I have a bunch of PVCs in a row, my pulse-ox will read 33, sometimes less. The oxygen saturation will go down too. The feeling in my chest is hard to describe, but it does feel sort of like I'm losing beats.

As you know, the heart is a pump. PVCs are contractions that happen at the wrong time in the pumping cycle and so are very inefficient. They don't move the blood along the way normal contractions do.

As a result, the pulse, by the time it gets to your finger, isn't strong enough for the pulse-ox to detect. Some of the beats are normal, and they get counted by the pulse-ox, but, even though the pacemaker is working fine, the beats thrown off by PVCs don't register.

So your pulse-ox reading is reflecting real phenomena, but the number it shows is not an accurate count of your actual heartbeats, and doesn't reflect the pacemaker's performance.

Hope this helps.

call

by Tracey_E - 2014-04-23 10:04:44

Always count manually when you get a low number with a machine. They are notoriously inaccurate with us, the pacing throws it off. It does not turn off and on, it watches every beat. If your min is 60bpm, that means it won't let you go more than a second without a beat. Make a note of the day/time, they can look it up on the report and see what the pm was doing at the time.

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