total knee surgery

I am suppose to go in for total knee surgery next week and I am thinking of cancelling the surgery as they are turning off my pacemaker and I have total heart block. Has anyone had this surgery done and had pacemaker turned off.

7 Comments

it's safe

by Tracey_E - 2016-05-18 12:05:03

They are not turning it off, they just put it in test mode so it paces at a steady rate for the duration of the surgery. Your rate won't drop under 60 in this mode. It won't go higher, either, but you won't be running around at the time so you don't need it to go higher. It's perfectly safe and very common. Ask if they use a magnet or have someone from the pacer company there. Having a rep there is preferable.

check again

by BillH - 2016-05-18 12:05:42

I suspect that what they want to do is not "turn off" the PM, but rather put it in a basic mode.

If that is what they want to do the PM will pace at a fixed rate. And many functions, such as rate response and automatic sensing of capture level, etc will be disabled (turned off).

called

by wildrose007@yahoo.com - 2016-05-19 05:05:04

She told me that because of the insturments the doctor uses it interferes with the pacemaker and a rep will turn it off and when dr is done rep will turn it back on. That is all that was told to me, I have called three times about it, even called my heart dr.

thank you

by wildrose007@yahoo.com - 2016-05-19 05:05:13

Thank you for the feed back, it has been very helpful. I am calling tomorrow and asking them if they mean test mode instead of virtually turning off pacemaker. Just scared me when she said, yes, turn it off, it has to be off the instruments interfere with the pacemaker. I have found this site very helpful, and everyone very kind. Once again thank you for your responses.

cauterizing?

by Tracey_E - 2016-05-19 08:05:36

I know that cauterizing can be tricky with a pacer, maybe that's the issue. If they are turning it off, they can put you on an external pacer during the surgery for back up, but as far as I know they only use test mode. They do that sometimes during device replacements if we have a very low underlying rate. I don't know the details, but I *do* know that other members have safely had knee replacementsf and come through it just fine! Your heart doc will know a lot more about what the rep will do than the knee doc.

Have you tried searching for knee replacements in the old posts?

what ever happens happens

by wildrose007@yahoo.com - 2016-05-23 05:05:57

I just resigned myself to the fact that what will be, will be

knee surgery

by wildrose007@yahoo.com - 2016-06-15 14:04:44

Thank you for all the comments made back to me.  I was very worried, but felt more at ease after reading what others had to say.  It all went well, am on the road to recovery

 

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