Exercise

I had pm implant April 2011 and cardioversion for flutter in early May. I am 76 and have been active including inline skating in marathon for past 15 years. I am now golfing, biking, walking, and started skating again.

I had my pm adjusted since I was getting high heartbeat numbers when skating such as 140 bpm. With the slow heartbeat prior to implant I am not accustomed to such high heart rates and am wondering if other aging athletes have any experience in returning to strenuous aerobic exercise and what level of heartbeat they are finding.

Jumper

3 Comments

High HR

by ElectricFrank - 2011-06-10 02:06:14

Be sure your HR monitor isn't fooling you. Most monitors aren't designed to handle the difference in the hearts electrical signal with a pacemaker. The pacer delivers a small electrical impulse to the heart to pace it. This shows up on the chest wall a spike in the ECG. Under some conditions the HR monitor will count the spike as one beat and the ventricle wave as another. It's possible to have it register 2X the real HR.

There are several other situations that can happen high activity folks. The doc have a lot more experience with sedentary patients.

One thing that is helpful is to ask for a copy of the pre and post programming report when you go in for a checkup. There are several of us here who can help make sense of it make suggestions.

frank

False HR Readings

by donb - 2011-06-10 08:06:43

Hi Jumper, I just want to add to Frank's comment. As I have heart blockage requiring a stent along with electrical heart block I also found that some monitors just won't sync in as Frank stated. The worst for me is when I go in for Cardiolite stress tests. Their monitor while doing treadmill can't decide if it's 60 beats or 120 as Frank said when a monitor reads 2X the real HR. My treadmill HR monitor has been really confused with my latest PM replacements. I've got a cheapie Timex which does better than the real expensive monitors found on equipment at our hospital Cardiac Rehab gym. Oh, also in my old age my Dr. now uses the chemical dialation rather than treadmill as I can't get my HR high enough to get good dialation showing my blood vessal condition.

Could Be Rate Response

by J.B. - 2011-06-10 10:06:25

Could be that the rate response is turned on and you do not need i, or it needs to be fine tuned. If you had no problem getting your heart rate to increase with activity before the implant my guess is you don't need a rate response to speed up your heart. Talk to you doctor.



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