Wrapped lead wire around pacemaker.

My wife has had a pacemaker installed. Several months ago, because of her lifting, gardening, etc she called in for a checkup when feeling weird. The doc said rather than just re- calibrating the device (normal), he recommended a new lead wire be inserted. He told us he would simply wrap the old lead wire around the pacemaker to prevent infection potential. Sounded kind of weird to me, but we went with this. He said if a new lead was put in, the potential of infection would be greatly increased. My wife did experience healing and the device is working great, however the complication is the swelling around the surgery cut site. About the size of an earthworm, and it gets irritated at times. What should I do at this point. Not ready to sue anybody, but just want to solve this problem. Is the Standard of Care for this particular operation?
Wrapping the wire around the device.....seems weird to me. Something is not right! She is seeing her cardiologist in a week.
What questions should I ask? I don't want to fall victim to the "trust" game, that I know docs play. Ultrasound of the area?
Any other suggestions would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

2 Comments

Leads

by webguy - 2014-08-17 02:08:41

Thanks, Inga for your comments and sharing your experiences. My wife gave me a little more detail on her swelling. Apparently it feels like a bump or bolt under her skin. Must be where they wrapped the wire around her pacemaker. What is an occlusion of the vein? I am thinking that this all is very ugly to her aesthetically. Would a plastic surgeon be able to correct this? The doc says he would be willing at the point of gun so to speak, to pull out the lead, but the possibility of infection would be great. She had this surgery last March and is 76yrs old. Another possibility might be to "aspirate" the fluid build up and maybe shrink the bump to where it is not so noticeable to her. Any comments would be welcomed.What do you think?

Geoff Fowler for Mary Fowler

Leads

by golden_snitch - 2014-08-17 03:08:04

Apparently, your wife has had a malfunctioning pacemaker lead replaced with a new lead, and the old lead was left in. Lead removal can be tricky and is associated with quite a few risks, so if there is no reason to remove it (occlusion of the vein or infection for instance), you leave it in. Now, leads - functioning or not - are always rolled up and usually placed under the pacemaker unit. They are much longer than we need them to be, therefore something needs to be done with the part that's not inside the vein/heart. While my EPs say that it's best to roll it up and then place it under the pacemaker, I can very well imagine that not every doctor does so. Actually, I have not always had it this way, either. My leads used to be rolled up and kind of buried in the connective tissue next to the pacemaker unit. Wrapping the wire around the device might be another technique used by some doctors.

How long ago was that surgery? If the site only gets irritated but doesn't show any signs of infection, I'd get it looked at, but then also give it some more time to heal. I had my last pacemaker surgery at the end of March, and my scar still gets irritated sometimes.

Inga

You know you're wired when...

Muggers want your ICD, not your wallet.

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It is just over 10 years since a dual lead device was implanted for complete heart block. It has worked perfectly and I have traveled well near two million miles internationally since then.