Raised voltage

not sure why my pacemaker voltage was raised?

3 Comments

How Long is a piece of ...

by donr - 2014-02-12 08:02:18

...spaghetti? (Ha! You thought I was gonna say "string," didn't you?)

There are a myriad of reasons & you gave us nothing to go on.

I'll hazard a guess - your heart was NOT capturing the pacing pulses & reacting to them. So the cardio raised the voltage to improve it.

Hope I guessed right.

Don

voltage

by Tracey_E - 2014-02-12 09:02:03

What Don said. They use the lowest voltage that your heart responds to so for some reason the heart no longer liked the old level. It could be scar tissue, sometimes it's the very start of a lead going, they went overboard optimizing and lowering last time, or more likely, simply age. How long have you had it?

asfasf

by boxxed - 2014-02-13 08:02:25

Thresholds can go up and down. Certain medications can cause it. Leads could be old. But it's perfectly normal to have threshold move up or down by an increment or two. If sensing is good, impedances are good, and there's no indication of a "trend" upwards I wouldn't be too worried about it.

It's not uncommon to periodically adjust voltage output up and down to maintain 2:1 safety margin.

Not to mention that everyone has their own little set of guidelines in regards to the sweet spot. Some people adhere to 2:1 safety margin at it's strictest, no matter how low the threshold is. Some reps/techs/docs do not like dropping a voltage below an absolute floor, no matter how good a threshold is. If you went from one person to the next for your check, wouldn't be surprised if they fiddled with it.

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