Heart pausing

Hi.. I recently posted that my heart was pausing again. Had an dual pacemaker fitted 2015 for 2bd degree heart block  I have the medtronic advisa. I started to feel my heart pausing and was able to capture this via my alivecor .. Sent the result of to my cardiologist and he then called me into the pacer clinic  Have been told today that heart is pausing for 3 secs.. They have adjusted the setting so my heart doesn't drop below 60 as it was dropping to 45 bpm . They also said that they have downloaded my readings from pacemaker and are now sending them off to the manufacturer  They also said if I still get any pauses I've got to go back ASAP.. Is this cause for concern I hope I haven't got a faulty pacemaker ..? Should have asked but found myself just walking away saying very little! 

2 Comments

hmmm

by Tracey_E - 2018-04-26 09:36:17

It's not likely the pacemaker is faulty and it's taken this long to notice. What is more likely is you developed a second problem in addition to the heart block and needed the settings changed to compensate. With heart block, the lower limit isn't usually an issue because the sinus node works normally so it's not about keeping the heart going fast enough, it's about keeping it in sync. The pacer kicks in if the atria beats but the ventricle doesn't keep up. If your heart was pausing, that sounds like sinus? That's a question I would ask, was it a sinus pause. Also ask how much you pace atrial and ventricle, at a guess I'd say you're probably pacing more atrial than you used to. 

This is nothing to worry about, btw, it's not at all uncommon to have more than one thing going on over time. You already had the fix in place so they can reprogram so we can get back to our regularly scheduled lives. 

Alivecor

by Gotrhythm - 2018-04-26 16:19:45

It's so frustrating, isn't it, not to think of what you should have asked until you get home.

TraceyE knows much more about pacemakers than I do. I don't have anything to add to her remarks. Bue I see you recorded the pause on your Alivecor. Clearly, you should keep using it.

I've looked at them several times and wondered if, since I don't have A-fib, if one could be of any value to me. Glad to know one was helpful to you.

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