my father pacemaker

my father has a pacemaker he was told at his last test that the pacemaker is working at 100% all the time it jumped from 74 what does this mean

2 Comments

Good day...

by chip - 2009-03-22 01:03:07

I would assume that your father’s pacemaker is dictating his heart beat 100% of the time and his hearts natural pacemaker is not functioning. Many of us live this way everyday - You can learn about pacemaker function here:

http://www.communitymed.org/Pacemakers

Hope this helps – God Bless!


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Father's Pacemaker

by SMITTY - 2009-03-22 04:03:03


Hello Neeser64,

For starters, my opinion is if the person that told your father his pacemaker was working 100% of the time and just left it there they did your father a great disservice. You see all pacemakers work 100% of the time but that does not necessarily mean they are sending the impulse that makes the heart beat 100% of the time.

But before going further let me qualify my comments a little. If your father was like me when he got his pacemaker he was told the pacemaker was working fine and he could go home. Again, if like me he came home thinking that pacemaker was the only thing between him and the Grim Reaper. As months went by I had a number of pacemaker checkups, most of which were to try to solve a problem that I thought was caused by my PM and had nothing to do with the amount of time it was working. Each time I was told "your PM is working fine." I knew before I got my PM my heart rate was usually around 60 and after the PM it was a constant 80 or above. After more months I learned of this site and started reading what others were saying about their PM and I started doing a little research on pacemakers and found some real eye-openers. To make a long story short, I will not say the people that were looking after my PM were lying to me, but they certainly were not telling me the entire story.

One of the things I have learned is all pacemakers work 100% of the time, but that does not mean they are the only thing keeping our heart beating. (Let me inject here, yes there are people PM dependant which means their PM works 100% of the time keeping their heart beating, but they are the exception.

Most of us with a pacemaker have an on demand device. It does its job by monitoring our heart function and waits for our heart's natural pacemaker to send an impulse to keep our heart beating. But in the event, for whatever reason, the natural pacemaker does not send the necessary impulse the PM will step in and send the impulse(s) necessary to give us a steady heart rhythm.

My suggestion to your father (if he doesn't already know all this) is that before he feels a PAC, PVC or skip beat (most pacemakers cannot stop these) and thinks his pacemaker is about to go on the blink is to ask that person to explain just how and when his pacemaker is working. Also, get them to explain what they mean by "His pacemaker is working 100% all the time."

If he truly is 100% pacemaker dependant, he should know that even if that PM stops his heart has a backup natural pacemaker that will most likely keep him going until he can get help. He will not feel very good but he will stay alive for some amount of time. However, the odds of his manmade pacemaker stopping are a lot lower than his being struck by lightening twice.

As for it going from 100% to 74% he may find that it has gone from 100% back down to 74%, or lower, at his next checkup. At my checkup in Sept. '08 my PM was helping the atrial 92% and the ventricle 2% of the time. In early march of '09 the PM it was helping the atrial 65% and the ventricle 15% of the time. I like to say that the only thing consistent about our hearts and pacemakers is their inconsistency. Change of the functions of each or the two together are never ending.

I wish your father the best,

Smitty

You know you're wired when...

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