broken wire

Just found out I have broken wire on lower chamber lead wire of dual chamber set up. Dr. says they have "by passed" lead and will see what happens (everything normal at present). She says if lead needs to come out they will use lazer, otherwise will try another lead in same artery?

Anybody know what type of symptoms I can expect to see if pacer malfunctions?  I’m 69 and have had pacer for 18 years (one generator replaced (2 years left on present one)

2 Comments

Broken Lead

by SMITTY - 2011-12-02 10:12:43

Hello Manaman,

My guess is the symptoms, if any, will depend on why you got the PM. If it were me facing the same situation I can tell you what I would do.

I got my PM for bradycardia (my heart rate was 50 or less) so all mine does is increase my heart rate. That would cause me check my heart rate to see if it was dropping below the low set point (80 for me) on my PM. Again for me, if the bad lead was the one going to the atrial I would probably be in trouble as I am paced more than 90% of the time in that chamber. If it were the lead to ventricle it would truly be wait and see as I'm paced less that 10% of the time in that chamber.

With all that said, I think your Dr is your best source of info on what you should look for.

Good luck,

Smitty

A different take on it

by ElectricFrank - 2011-12-03 01:12:24

As usual the story the doctors tell doesn't make much sense.

First off there is no way to bypass the lead. There is a method called Unipolar pacing that changes the way the lead is used. The Unipolar mode can sometime cause muscles iin the area to twitch, but only when the lead is in use. The other approach would be to shut off ventricular pacing entirely. If you really don't need lower chamber pacing that would work.

The problem with all this is that you seem to be pacing very little, based on your pacers life between changes. So waiting for a while to see what happens would leave me wondering how long it would be before the pacer needed to operate.

The other question is whether the doc tested the lead setup. It is easy on the programmer to tell the pacer to pace your lower chamber at a higher rate like 100bpm and see if it works. That would give assurance that it was available if needed.

frank

You know you're wired when...

You have rhythm.

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I, too, am feeling tons better since my implant.