Skipped heartbeats

Can a heart still skip beats after a pacemaker is implanted?

6 Comments

Smitty!!!!!!!!

by Pookie - 2009-12-29 09:12:05

What a wonderful explanation. This just might help others who are experiencing the same thing.

You explain things so well.

thanks
Pookie

Smitty!

by pacergirl - 2009-12-29 09:12:18

This is what was happening to me! I keep telling the EP and the Doc that I feel missed beats, and I was right. Thank you for putting this into words that make sense to me and it seems to others too.
Pacergirl

yes and no

by Tracey_E - 2009-12-29 09:12:51

You can still have irregular beats and half beats (pvc's and svt's) with a pm. If your rate gets up too fast and the pm maxes out you can drop beats. But pauses and skipped beats that would let your rate drop too low? Not going to happen with a pm. The pm has a minimum setting. For example, if your min rate is set at 60 bpm, that's one per second. It will not let you skip and go 2 seconds, it gives your heart one second to beat on its own and if it does not, then the pm steps in and generates a beat.

Skipped heartbeats

by cmoore - 2009-12-29 11:12:07

Thank you--that was very informational. If I have more problems I will talk to my cardiologist about changing some things.

Thanks again.

Skipped heartbeats

by cmoore - 2009-12-29 11:12:38

I know my rate won't go below 60 but was just wondering if I needed to be concerned that I was feeling skipped beats as I was last night. It did not last but a few minutes--my BP was not high and neither was my heart rate. I have considered calling my cardiologist but he is not in the office yet.

Skip Beats

by SMITTY - 2009-12-29 11:12:56


Hello CMoore,

Your question may have been one short sentence, but the answer is more complicated than I can put in one sentience. Tracey gave you good info, but I would like to add a little as irregular heart beat is a problem and sometimes a severe problem, I endured from Feb. '07 to July '09. During that time I searched for info in many places and bent the ear of almost anyone that would hold still for a few minutes. I got lots of input but the most valuable being what I got here at the PM Club.

If you have a pacemaker that is an on demand pacemaker it monitors the heart function and will send an impulse to make the heart beat only when it determines the heart's natural pacemaker is not sending an impulse. Therein is what allows some of us to have skip beats, PVCs or PACs. Any, or all, of these are in one sense a premature heart beat, even the skip beats that may just not be a fully matured heart beat. In other words all of these are heat beats that are not good heart beats and as such do not provide a strong enough contraction of one or both heart chambers to cause the heart to pump blood. Yet the pacemaker may detect these preemies and not send an impulse. The result is if you are monitoring your heart rate manually or with an electronic device, these preemies may be so weak neither can pick them up as heart beats and you will count or see a heart rate much lower than the low set point on your pacemaker. I guess it can be said the preemies are faking out the pacemaker.

This happened to me. My PM had a low set point of 70, yet I would frequently find my heart rate blow 70. Getting a heart as low as 42 was not uncommon. Of course when that happened I didn't need to count pulse because I had chest pain simply because my heart did not have enough good beats to make it pump a high enough volume of blood to meet the need of my body, especially the heart. The chest pain could occur any time my HR was below 50. My solution was to get the low set point on my PM raised to 80. My logic said if I can add 10 BPM then the low readings should always be above 50. To my surprise the increase in low set point wiped out 90%+ of my preemies and I have seen my HR below 50 for a few seconds only one time since the low set point change.

When an echogram confirmed this the cardiologist was as surprised as I was. His reasoning was that the higher heart rate was in effect heading the preemies off at the pass as they did not have time to form. I'll not argue with him or anyone on the whys as all I know is the increase in the setting was on 7-28-09 and I still have very few preemies. I had to have a PM replacement on 10-22-09 and I asked for and got the same settings as was on the old PM and I'm still enjoying life very few preemies.

Smitty

You know you're wired when...

You invested in the Energizer battery company.

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I am 100% pacemaker dependant and have been all my life. I try not to think about how a little metal box keeps me alive - it would drive me crazy. So I lead a very active life.