Vibration with pacemaker

Whenever I drive on a rough road , I can feel my pacemaker vibrating. Also if I jump and come down hard when playing basketball it jolts my body and heart goes off rythm and b/p goes high and pressure starts in chest. Has anyone else had this to happpen?

2 Comments

Pulse rate increases over rough road

by solarsauna - 2010-03-10 03:03:12

I had a similar experience of my pulse rate going when driving on a rough road. I've asked the pacemaker clinic to adjust the parameters to reduce the sensitivity to motion, but I cannot perceive it has made any difference so far. I have a handy little pulse rate monitor that looks like a ring on my finger which makes monitoring easy.

Rate Response

by SMITTY - 2010-03-11 12:03:28


Hello Chevron,

Yes I had it happen when the rate response feature on my pacemaker was active. My guess it that is happening to you. The rate response uses an accelerometer to detect body movement, such as exercise, and it will increase your heart rate. Unfortunately the accelerometer can't tell the difference in body movement from exercise and the shaking the body gets from riding over a rough road and increases the heart rate. This like other features on your PM is adjustable and possibly yours can be made less sensitive.

You can check (at least I have checked mine this way) to see if the rate response is activated by tapping lightly on your chest close to the pacemaker site for about 15 to 30 seconds. Don't tap on the pacemaker itself, but a few inches from it. When you stop your heart rate will return in a minute or two to what it was before you started the test. I would use the self testing after I had adjustments made on the rate response. But this feature was a problem for me so I finally asked for it to be turned off.

Good luck,

Smitty

You know you're wired when...

You always have something close to your heart.

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