Pacemaker speeding you up when not needed.

I've had an ongoing issue probably since day 1 and I'm starting to push my electrocardiologist and the techs to come up with some kind of explaination.

I periodically experience what I call "unwanted pacing". My pulse rapidly shoots up to 130-135 (135 is my max rate) when I really dont need it to. This is most often seen when in a car usually as a passanger but sometimes as the driver. It seems to be a combination of speed, road roughness and the harshness of the Cars suspension. To complicate things further there are weeks when it happens often and weeks when it barely happens at all. 

When I (or the driver) pulls over and stops the pulse rapidly drops to normal within typically 15-45 seconds, seldom any longer.

I thought it was the accelerometer being too sensitive but its a Biotronik Evia DR-T and having just had a session with the techs I now know there is no accelerometer. The Tech tells me DDD is off and CLS is on although the settings print out I have says DDD-CLS.

They also tell me that the PM responds to changes in my body and are at a loss to explain the strong correlation between motion and the unwanted pacing other than to ask semi jokingly if am I scared when someone is driving (no its not the case).

I've had the same thing happen in planes - rarely and only when taxiing but never in the air and I've done short (1hr) to long (14hr) flights) and occasionally when walking very slowly like browsing in shops.

Anyone got any thoughts?

3 Comments

CLS

by Tracey_E - 2018-06-13 11:13:00

Not many here have CLS and even fewer can explain it. If you do a search, it's come up before, just not recently.

A little research

by Gotrhythm - 2018-06-13 11:55:03

CLS is way beyond my level of understanding. Still, in a quick internet search this sentence jumped out at me.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12914629

Some patients do not tolerate the CLS mode because of inappropriate tachycardia, mainly related to postural changes.

I have copied it to here, only because sometimes it helps to know you're not the only one.

I also gathered from the article that CLS is able to respond to autonomic nervous system activity--something my pacemaker can't do. No matter how scared I get my heart doesn't pound. I'm sure the semi-joking question about being afraid to let others drive ticked you off--it would me--but given that the autonomic nervous system responds to emotions, the question wasn't totally off base.

Anyway, here are two clues, postural effects and emotional response that you can experiment with on yourself. Hopre this helps.

Heart racing

by metzzman - 2018-06-29 18:36:40

My heart races everytime my wife walks into the room. Unfortunately, it also races everytime she is driving the car. 

 

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