Out of breath

I have been having problems running slowly and yet being out of breath. I've discovered that my pacemaker cuts in half the heart rate when it exceeds 150 bpm. Do other people experience this? What do you do? Thanks in advance


mitiger

1 Comments

frustrating

by Tracey_E - 2008-08-21 01:08:45

That's called a 2:1 block and it sounds like the safety feature in case you fibrillate. If the atria takes off fibrillating, the pm will put you into a block with the ventricle skipping every other beat. It's good if you're fibrillating so your hr doesn't take off, bad if you're trying to work out and it's holding you back! I'm not sure what your condition is that needed the pm but when I had a similar problem it was fixed by first confirming what was happening by doing a stress test, then reprogramming the pm. I mostly track ventricle, my atrial rate more or less normal and I have no history of fibrillation or arrhythmia, so they turned off that safety feature.

They also might be able to program you to have a higher max rate, it sounds like 150 is your upper limit. Mine is 170 right now but that's considered really high and they didn't turn it up that high in one jump. They'll probably want to deal with whatever's causing you to go into the block first, then see if you keep maxing out at your current 150 before they turn it up higher.

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