Mode switches
- by cneils
- 2015-04-29 12:04:50
- Checkups & Settings
- 2456 views
- 1 comments
I just had my pacemaker interrogated and it showed
that I had 17 mode switches. What is a mode switch?
1 Comments
You know you're wired when...
Your old device becomes a paper weight for your desk.
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My eight year old son had a pacemaker since he was 6 months old. He does very well, plays soccer, baseball, and rides his bike. I am so glad he is not ashamed of his pacemaker. He will proudly show his "battery" to anyone.
Mode switch feature
by golden_snitch - 2015-04-29 03:04:44
There are basically two kinds of mode switches:
The first is a switch when an atrial high rate episode occurs, for instance atrial flutter or atrial fibrillation. If that happens, the pacemaker can switch from a mode where it tracks the atria, and makes the ventricles beat at the same pace, into a mode where it ignores what's happening in the atria, and just paces the ventricles at a steady and appropriate rate. This mode switch is a kind of safety feature to prevent that a fast arrhythmia in the atria causes the ventricles to go into a fast arrhythmia, too. This is type that is usually meant when one talks about mode switches.
But there is another feature that can be called mode switch. Some dual-chamber pacemakers also offer a mode switch feature for intermittent heart block episodes. In this case, the pacemaker is usually working in an AAI(R) mode, so it only senses and paces the atria. Now, when the patient experiences several heart blocks in a certain period of time, the pacemaker switches from AAI(R) to a DDD(R) mode, so that now it paces and senses both, the atria and the ventricles.