400 BPM?

Hello friends. I'd appreciate any insight into whay this happened: A recent reading on my Enpulse dual chamber recently included a heart rate of over 400 bpm for several seconds. I looked up the time - it was during surgery to perform triple fusion in cervical/neck area. I don't have a history of rapid heart rate or fibrillation (my pm is for heart block in the His bundle). The surgeon is a highly aclaimed neurosurgeon that I trust. Everyone involved knew about the surgery and a Medtronic rep was on call at the time. My concern is that I will soon be RETURNING to surgery to have a fourth level fused and wonder if the surgery process can damage my heart or pm. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

3 Comments

Heart Rate During Surgery

by BOB 1 - 2008-11-02 01:11:11


There are some surgical devices that will emit an electromagnetic field that could affect your PM, but I hardly think these would ever damage a PM. As for the fast heart rate, it is my understanding that when the heart rate exceeds the upper setting on the PM the PM takes itself to the sidelines and just monitors heart rhythm until the heart rate returns to a range below the upper settings. However, you may have the perfect person to ask in the Medtronic rep. My experience has been that those people are very sharp when it comes to our PM, and in fact are much sharper than most doctors about the operation of our PM.

If it were me I know I would want to discuss all of this with my cardiologist and the surgeon if I was concerned about damage to my heart. But again, I wouldn't be concerned about the PM.

Good luck

I have experienced 420bpm

by Katielou - 2008-11-03 05:11:46

I am unable to comment on the main body of your post but I can speak on the 400bpm. I have a PM/ICD to control my condition, Long QT. I very fortunately regained consciousness after two cardiac arrests and was then diagnosed and fitted with the ICD. Since then I have had two more arrests and after interrogation it was shown I had gone into ventricular fibrillation with a 420bpm heart rate. On both of these occasions I received a 25 jewel shock from my ICD which started my heart beating normally again. I agree with Frank - if you had in fact gone into fibrillation you would have been in an emergency situation. Fibrillation is the most severe rhythm and can be fatal if not treated within a few seconds - you would absolutely have needed emergency intervention. Frank is very up on all these things so I would certainly be happy to consider his thoughts but of course your cardiologist is the best person to speak with.

Good luck with your forthcoming surgery

Lesley

400BPM

by ElectricFrank - 2008-11-03 12:11:31

I suspect that the reading was what we refer to as an artifact in the data possibly caused by equipment used in the procedure. During the surgery they were monitoring you on an ECG in the O.R. and would have been very concerned with a 400BPM rate. It would have been seen as near fibrillation and triggered an emergency. The ECG's used in the O.R. are filtered to reject artifacts caused by other equipment, where the pace is not due to space and power limitations.

Hope this isn't too complex. If you have any questions let me know.

frank

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