I just went for my bi annual reading of my Medtronic pacemaker that was installed 3 years ago to treat Bradycardia and 3rd stage blockage.
My normal readings for the top chamber were usually in the 15-20 % pacing range and zero for the bottom chamber.
Now the top chamber is 12%, which is fine but the bottom chamber shows 40% pacing. Quite a big jump in usuage. The technician didn't seem too concerned since there are patients with 100% pacing but this is out of the norm for me.
The only changes in the recent past was a change in meds to Bystolic, 2.5 mg a year ago. The cardio Dr usually reads the reports after a few days and I guess will get back to me if he sees a problem
Has this happened to anyone else? Any thoughts from the group?
Thanks to all

George

 

 

The technician is correct that many pace 100% and that's perfectly fine, but any big change should be addressed to see what changed. It's not necessarily bad, but I'd want to know why. Bystolic drops your hr, so that could cause you to pace more. Why are you on it?

If you have av block (as opposed to blocked arteries, which are plumbing, not electrical, and not treated with a pm), I would expect you to pace primarily ventricle. With av block, your SA node- nature's pacemaker- works normally but the signal gets blocked before it gets to the AV node in the ventricle and makes the ventricles beat. The pm watches for the atria to beat, if the ventricles don't beat immediately then it causes a beat so the heart stays in sync. That's ventricle pacing. If your atria goes too slow, it will raise it, that's atrial pacing.