I am 7 weeks post ventricle lead replacement and feeling GREAT finally. I have been walking 1-2 hours daily since the replacement but now I am starting to get a real cardio workout and tomorrow I will start weight training again. My question is that when I saw my doc last week she mentioned a setting for exercise that could happen if I felt like I was hitting the wall when I exercised. I didn"t get that feeling this morning but what did happen is my heart rate monitor (Polar) was jumping all over the place( 105-125-66) I have a guidant 2 lead pm. Anyone experience this? and /or had their pm adjusted for exercise. What is adjusted? I need to add that my baseline ie .5 and I am set for 2.0 and it has taken 4 visits to find a setting that works for my(minimum "ghost beats" and still in "safe" zone ) Also my ventricle lead was replaced because it was not doing its job (whether it moved or broke I guess I will never know)
Thanks for any input,
Bonnie

 

 

Bonnie,

If the contacts to your HRM are clean and you are making a good connection, all I can say about the wacked out reading is get used to it.
Although it does not appear to be dangerous using a HRM while exercising, you will experience inerrant readings. I was running a couple of days ago and when finished my avg. hr was 236!
Normally what I do is just remove the HRM for a few minutes and then put it back on and things balance out again.
Hope this helped.

Tripastor

 

There is a problem with some HRM's that use the ECG method (have electrodes making contact with your chest). They will sometimes read the pacer signal as on beat and the actual heart beat as a second one. That can cause the HRM to either jump around or read a HR twice the actual.
That sounds like what happened with Tripastor's 236. Actual rate may have been something like 236/2 or 113.

I used one of the Polar units that reads the blood pulse in the finger tip. It didn't have the doubling problem, but was sensitive to bouncing along or sun light.

frank