Question on pacing as I am new to this

I had mitral valve repair surgery in april for severe non symptomatic mitral valve prolapse currently 27 and developed complete heart block about a week later as a result of the surgery. where my nodes where working on their own but not comunicating developed brachardyia. I belive my settings are 60 and 136. I had a checkup in August after diong my first remote and it showed I had an underlying rythem so she reprogrammed it a little so it only paces as it needs to maybe chnaged the rate a bit lower had a heart rate I want to say in the 90's. Now about a week or two ago I kind of felt off felt something in my heart area. I did a remote because my resting heart rate was much lower which I think I am still recovering on the inside from my valve repair surgery. my heart rate was in the low 70's and even the 60's at times and I want to say it might have gotten lower then 60 which then my device should have been pacing fot me I think that picked up nothing then I felt like I was being switched over to being pacer dependent and did another and was told over the phone that I was being depending on the device 95% which is no cause of concern or office visit. How exactly does my device know when to pace or not?

1 Comments

How does it know?

by AgentX86 - 2018-10-17 22:39:14

Your pacemaker is doing two things.  First, it is setting a minimum pace (setting of 60, as you say above).  That's one beat per second, so if your heart doesn't initiate a heartbeat a second after the last, the pacemaker does it.  If the heart initiates a beat before that time, the pacemaker "inhibits" a pace and lets your natural pacemaker do its thing. The 95% number they told you simply means that 95% of the time your pacemaker is doing the pacing. That's not good or bad, just is.

The second, and most important thing it's doing, in your case, is connecting the top half of the heart (the atria) to the bottom half (ventricles).  "Heart block" means that this communication is interrupted (blocked). Your pacemaker senses the initiation of the heartbeat, by either the pacemaker or the heart's natural pacemaker, waits a programmed period of time, then starts what's known as a QRS complex to trigger the ventricles to beat.  Thus the pacemaker is a path around your heart block.

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