bad atrial lead

• by theravadaz
• 2015-07-29 09:07:33
• Batteries & Leads
• 1728 views
• 0 comments

I would just like to run this by everyone, in case anyone has had a similar experience or is just interested.

About a 3 years ago, a year after a pace maker was inserted for heart block, I had alternating episodes of low blood pressure and maximum rate, and high pressure and minimum rate. This was after doing some strenuous work involving driving nails.

The electrophysiologist first said that it was "electromechanical dissociation", and later changed it to "under-sensing." In any case he shut off tracking from the atria and gave me a fixed rate. Another EP was critical and put me back on DDD settings, but eventually I received a vibratory alert that checked out to indicate a bad atrial lead. So he shut off the bad lead and put me on VVIR settings.

My intuition is that the first EP should have checked the lead--but maybe he did and it was only intermittently bad. Anyway, I am now looking into replacing the bad lead, and regretting not getting to the matter sooner.