my daughter had her pacemaker placed just over a year ago and did well with recovery. she has had asthma symptoms develop over the last 6 months and is being treated daily for that. in the past week, she has had a couple episodes of swelling in her knuckles with a little redness....i don't know what its from?? could this all be related to the pacemaker or underlying condition of complete heart block? i did a little looking online (dangerous, i know) and saw these things could be related to heart failure...but with a pacemaker is that even possible? we have an appt. with her cardiologist coming up this week, just thought i would run these questions by some "veterans" while we wait. thanks!

 

 

I'd check with the pediatrician rather than the cardiologist. Have you checked the side effects of the asthma meds?

I have congenital complete heart block also. It is a fairly simple problem, just an electrical short circuit in the heart. The pm completes the circuit and gives us a perfectly normal heart rate. Our hearts are normally structurally just fine and our natural pacemaker (SA node) works fine, the pm is just there to tell the ventricles when they've missed a signal from the atria to beat. Once treated with a pm, we shouldn't have any symptoms. If we have to have a heart problem, this is a good one to have :o)

The pm can send the signal to beat, but it can't make the heart muscle contract and respond so yes heart failure is possible with a pm but I'd be really shocked if that's what's happening! Don't spend too much time on google and freak yourself out. With CHF, it's not a little swelling, it's a LOT of swelling, usually in hands and feet both.