new member with q's

HI I am48 yrs old and scheduled for my 2nd pm surgery in 3 yrs. I was diagnosed w/complete LBBB in feb 05. my cardiologist was pretty non chalant and basically siad to go home and deal... I changed Drs pretty qiuck. By Oct 05 I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and scheduled for my pm nov 4 2005. felt much better and got on with mylife for a while ... thenlast year I was told I have one of the recalled leads from medtronics, MY dr who is a great surgeon, not so good at bedside manners.. Told me not to worry as I do not have a defib but they would keep an eye on it. My battery life isnt great, they said I would get 5 years but now it reads as having @6 months .so going to Dr q 3 months now. earlier this month I started having pain in my chest just to the right of the sternum which also caused a sensation in my throat like when the test your pacer and turn it up. I went to dr and scheduled for replacement of everything, complete new pacer and leads on 1/22/09. I am really nervous... anyone out there have the battery go soo fast? any info onlead replacement appreciated!

2 Comments

leads

by Tracey_E - 2008-12-28 10:12:08

Bad leads can kill your battery life! I have an impeded lead now and it has about 2 years left instead of the 5 or 6 it should. Picture an open window with the air conditioning running. The house is still cooling but your power bill will be higher. A bad lead can be the same way- it takes more juice to get the signal from the pm to the heart so it's using up more power but it's still working.

Are they adding the new leads on top of the old ones or doing an extraction? If on top of the old ones, it'll be just like your first surgery was, probably down to using the same incision.

Pacemaker Battery Life

by Nim Rod - 2008-12-28 11:12:45

The following are comments on pacemaker battery life that were made by Smitty and Frank on 1-31-08.


CAUSES FOR SHORT BATTERY LIFE

a) Make of pacemaker

b) Number of leads, (1, 2 or 3)

c) Pacemaker settings, A low end setting that is 70 or above usually means the pacemaker will assist the heart more often.

d) Resistance of the leads. This can increase as the leads get older or for any one of several reasons.

e) Power (Voltage) settings.

f) Expertise and knowledge of the technicians doing the checkups. One with little experience or little overall knowledge of the intricacies of a pacemaker can establish settings that will increase the drain on the battery thereby shortening its life.

g) The stability of the health of the person's heart. If the heart’s health deteriorates, then the pacemaker may have to work more often and the setting changed to accommodate these changes.

I've had my PM for eight years. The first time I was given an estimated battery life remaining was about eight years and I got this at the end of five years operation. During the sixth year I had some major changes in my medications which resulted in my pacemaker assisting >90% of the time. At the end of the sixth year the estimated remaining battery life was four years, and on my last checkup at 7.5+ year’s operation that was down to 3.3 years. I am eagerly awaiting my next checkup in March to see what the number is now.

This is the reason I get copies of the printouts from my checkups. The technician will give me the current numbers but they are reluctant to discuss how these compare with the last checkup numbers or how the current numbers figure into the entire picture of my PM operation. I take these numbers home and go over them with a fine tooth comb looking for changes. If I see something that is a mystery I can call and ask a specific question. Sometimes I even get an answer to my question.

My suggestion is for anyone to keep up with the battery life degradation and do their own remaining battery life estimating. Your guess will probably be as good as anyone.

Smitty


Smitty covered most of the issue very completely so will just make a quick comment. Pacing voltage (or more correctly the joules of energy in each pacing pulse) has a large effect on battery life. At the end of 3 years mine was still showing an estimated battery life of 5-6 years. During that time my ventricle voltage was 2.5V and pacing was near 100% Then I had something happen (probably a virus) that caused me to have intermittent loss of pacing. The Medtronic rep considered it an emergency and set the voltage to 5V. A phone check a week later showed the battery estimate to be 1-2 years. After about a month I insisted on having the voltage requirement checked again and we were able to turn it down to 3.3V. Now the battery estimate went back up to 3-5 years. I'm feeling much better again and my latest telephone checkup showed a pacing voltage of 2.5V is again correct, but it can only be changed at an office visit. I intend to again ask for an office visit to set the voltage down and expect to see another increase in battery life.

You can draw your own conclusion about the effect on pacemaker sales and surgical work to leave the voltage turned up. There is some additional safety margin with the higher voltage, but some studies show that it also contributes to deterioration of the electrode site.

Frank

You know you're wired when...

The mortgage on your device is more than your house.

Member Quotes

I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for pacemakers. I've had mine for 35+ years. I was fainting all of the time and had flat-lined also. I feel very blessed to live in this time of technology.