perminante irregular beating

hi all my husband has a pm /and a merchanical mitral valve along with heart failure lvsd we went to see pacemaker consultant and have now been told my heart is in af perminant so now I have to go back in and have eather another wire added to pm or a difrent pacemaker we was under the impression that a pm is to control af may be we have it wrong has anyone else had this problem he has a ddd st jude pacemaker fitted at present any info on this would be helpful thank you all and have a merry christmass

1 Comments

PM and a-fib

by Theknotguy - 2013-12-22 04:12:27

The pacemaker doesn't control a-fib. It will only keep a slow heartbeat from getting slower. If you are athletic and need a heartbeat above 140 they can set the PM so it will allow you to go up to those faster speeds.

The only PM of which I am aware that has an a-fib PM setting is the Medtronics. The Medtronics website has an article on that. The a-fib setting isn't FDA approved. So even if you have the Medtronics PM and have the software they can't turn it on yet. (We can hope.)

I have a-fib. So what they did for me was to give me meds to slow down the heart. Then the PM is used to keep my heart from going too slow.

I had a bad episode of a-fib where the heartbeat went from 80 BPM to 140BPM and all the PM did was sit there and watch. I had to do a trip to the ER and get a Cardizem drip to slow the heart down, otherwise it would have killed me.

There is an a-fib website that goes more into a-fib - what it is - what it does, etc.

http://www.beatyoura-fib.com/

Hope this helps.

Theknotguy

You know you're wired when...

You can hear your heartbeat in your cell phone.

Member Quotes

I am very lucky to have my device.