3% in 1 week bad?

23 year old female I had a pacemaker put in on april 11th 2014, when I went into the emergency room they gave me atropine because my heart rate was below 40 and within 20 minutes went right back down after being brought up to the cardiac care unit while I slept my heart rate went down to 20bpm my heart stopped and than paused for 4 seconds and while talking to the.doctor my nurse came in and told him I was having vtach for the last 5 seconds. Not to sure what that is if someone could please explain and also wanted to know if it was bad or not. Within the week after having the pacemaker in I ended up back in the hospital they had someone check the pacemaker and I was told 3% was used and it was only a week give or take a day or two.

2 Comments

3%

by kmom - 2014-04-27 01:04:03

just means that you were only paced 3% of the time. Did you get a dual chamber or single?? where are you paced?? both atria and ventricle?? I have a dual chamber with atrial and ventricle leads. I paced at my first check up at 64% in atria and 6% in ventricle. what was your dx?? If you have heart block then your sinus node and atria usually sets the heart rhythm and rate. The PM will pace you if it senses that your ventricles are not keeping up. in My case SSS, my something was wrong with my sinus node and not correctly sending signals to the atria in the proper manner so it would fire correctly. with my PM it will sense and if my atria doesn't get the signal from the sinus node the PM will kick in. I also have a-fib where the atria just sits there and quivers but doesn't beat so again the signal isn't getting to the proper place. The medication i'm on for the a-fib also reduces my heart rate so I was constantly going from either tachy to brady rhythms. when my heart rate went too lots of times in the 40's i'd darn near pass out. The PM has made an enormous difference in how I feel!

3%

by golden_snitch - 2014-04-27 04:04:51

Hi!

I might be wrong, but maybe your understanding is that 3% of its battery were already used after just one week? Now, that would be a misunderstanding. As kmom say, the percentage indicates how much your are paced. And in this regard 3% is really not much. If you continue with that, you'll get probably 12 years or so out of the battery.

The bradycardia you had (heart rate going below 40) and the 4 seconds pause can be caused either by your sinus node (natural pacemaker of the heart) being a bit sick and therefore going to slow or even stopping (sinus node arrest); or you had a heart block which is a situation in which the electrical impulses coming from the sinus node are blocked by the AV-node, so that the ventricles will not get the signal to beat. A heart block can lead to bradycardia, but also to pauses.

V-tach is ventricular tachycardia. If it lasts for only 5 seconds, it's a so called non-sustained v-tach. You said that you were talking to the doctor, and then the nurse came in and said you had the v-tach, so I guess you did not even feel it? Five seconds isn't that bad. In fact, as soon as people receive a cardiac rhythm device, you see episodes like that in 20%-25% of all patients - without any consequence. Just happens. They probably had them before the device went it, just that no one knew because there was no device to record them. I have had episodes, and my rhythm specialists are not worried at all.

Inga

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