Heart rate

My pacemakers minimum bpm is set at 70. In the last couple hours it has dropped to 45 bpm. And has stayed there for several hours. Other than feeling like crap. Should I be concerned?

Thanks

7 Comments

call

by billylittle - 2014-10-07 05:10:21

Call your doctors office or on call nurse...

Low Heart Rate

by donb - 2014-10-07 05:10:41

Hi, Don have you a very good answer !! I'm also a DonB & I had my 4th pacemaker erode a couple years ago. My replacement implant was pacing me like 50 while just out of recovery which I dealt with for a month. Went in for check-up a month later with Medtronic Rep. & told me everything is "fine"
So I asked him if my low setting was now 50 ?? He said no, it's at 60 but still insisted my pacemaker was just "fine".
Well in a short time erosion started again & I had a good interrogation which showed practically no atrial sensing. AS it turned out I also had infection going & leads & pacemaker were removed. With my 6th implant I'm doing well. I just don't like the word "fine" as it's sometimes a cover all.
DonB (another Don)

Re Yes, BUT......

by gch12345 - 2014-10-07 05:10:45

donr

You are probably right about PVC's. There are long pauses between each beat. I did use my finger . And my blood pressure machine to get my pulse. This is a replacement pacemaker. The first one lasted almost eight yeasts. I have a duel lead pacemaker for complete heart block. It's still doing it now. If it continues I will probably call Dr tomorrow.

donr thanks again for the info.

Forget the...

by donr - 2014-10-07 07:10:25

...:probably" crap!!! Call your Cardio. Have someone who KNOWS what he's doing actually look at you & diagnose your specific situation.

There is no law that says you have to feel like crap!

Don

Yes, BUT....

by donr - 2014-10-07 08:10:24

...There may well be a simple explanation for it. Still makes you feel like CRAP, however.

1) Your PM could have failed - VERY unlikely.

2) I see that you are a very recent recipient of a PM, so not truly familiar w/ all their issues. It could also be a lead that came our because it was NOT properly implanted.

3) You did NOT tell us WHY you have the PM, so we cannot even make intelligent guesses as to why this is happening.

That being said, I'll make a reasonable guess as to what happened to you, because it happened to me!

You are having a string of PVC's - Premature Ventricular Contractions - that's where the Ventricles contract prematurely (Neat, eh, just like the name implies) & the pumping efficiency of the heart drops dramatically. If you have a lot of these in sequence, or every other beat, or every third beat, you will feel like CRAP - pure, undiluted, unmitigated, unadulterated CRAP!

Now - HOW did you check your pulse? W/ a finger on the wrist? I'm betting that is the case - you are not a practiced pulse taker, so you just did not feel the wimpy PVC that occurred & got a low count. The wimpy beats were there, you just did not sense them.

Your PM cannot do anything about them, since they come early & the PM can only fix things that are going to come late or not at all. It cannot predict the future.

Now, these PVC's will NOT kill you - they will make you feel like it, but they won't unless you have a gazillion of them in a row that causes Ventricular Tachycardia (V-Tach) or Ventricular Fibrillation (V-Fib) - these two fellows are bad news.

No matter what, you deserve an answer to what happened. Call your cardio like Billy said. He/she casn tell you very quickly what it was. If it was PVC's, the PM's memory will have a record of it. That's a "Not to Worry" thing. The others are to worry abut.

Donr

Forget the...

by lauram65 - 2014-10-07 10:10:25

what Don said.

I would go one step further. I would call now. Even if it is after hours, call and get the on call cardio.

Laura

Call Cardio

by Marine8914 - 2014-10-10 12:10:17

I have been having the same issue and it seems that my PM is not properly capturing my heart rate. It sucks. I have a Medtronic dual chamber. Good luck!

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