PMT

Has anyone ever been diagnosed with  PMT- pacemaker mediAted tachycardia? My pm implantation was Nov2-3 for exact opposite reason! Low heart rate. Is PMT dangerous? And why is this PM causing me other issues? Thought it was supposed to be helping me. I understand it is actually helping because Im pacing about 68% of the time, but why the high heart rate? Still feel like crap too! Even after they turned voltage down from

5 to 2.5. said I was having diaphramatic sensitivity? Just seems like  this PM is causing me more grief than helping? Please let me know if you have ever experienved PMT and how they fixed it. Thanks 45YM

3 Comments

PMT VS PMS

by ROBO Pop - 2017-12-11 16:48:29

PMT is not a big deal. It's a complex issue but basically just means your device is confused by arrhythmias. They can change your program settings to compensate.

PMT is rare but it happens

by Gotrhythm - 2017-12-11 17:09:47

You get a pacemaker for bradycardia and wind up with tachycardia, that just seems wrong, doesn't it? I can laugh at the irony now, but it wasn't funny at the time. I wanted to throw something at the next person who told me my pacemaker was "working fine," because it felt like the thing was killing me.

Here's the deal. PMT means that a fast heart rate is being caused by a runaway feedback loop between your heart and the pacemaker. Having PMT indicates that your pacemaker's programming needs to be changed. In my case, I had PVC induced PMT that came on gradually over a couple of years. The pacemaker was pacing the ventricle when it didn't actually need to be paced. Because I had no AV block, the simplest fix was to turn off the lead to the ventricle. Voila! No more PMT. I felt much better.

There are other ways to stop PMT. Many Pacemaker Club members are more savvy than I about programming of our devices, and can probably be more specific about the programming changes that will overcome PMT. All I can say is, if you are having PMT something is wrong--not with the pacemaker but with what the programming is telling it to do--and should be fixed.

Today's pacemakers are very sophisticated. Even if your doctor or the tech doesn't know what to do, the manufacturer's rep should know what tweaks are neccessary. I'm a little stunned that the programming wasn't changed as soon as the problem was discovered.

 

 

Thank you

by D_davis72 - 2017-12-12 01:09:31

Thank you for this most interesting information.  

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