Pacemaker Placement

Im Matt,18 years old and expecting a pacemaker soon. I have been diagnosed with Complete Heart Block since the age of two, but I have never slowed down with sports. I have been playing baseball, football, basketball, hockey and most importantly rugby. But I am aware that getting a pacemaker may have me stop playing contact sports because I may damage it. I read an article a few months ago about a European rugby player having to get a pacemaker, and getting it put under his chest muscle so it has more protection, and he was allowed to continue playing rugby. IF anyone has any knowledge about this surgury or the limitations I will have after my surgury it would be greatly appreciated.

3 Comments

talk to your doc about placement

by COBradyBunch - 2010-05-02 11:05:35

Talk to your doc. Some don't want to mess with placement but if your doc is one of those ask for another doc. Contact sports still might be a tough thing for your doc to swallow but ask and look around.

ask your surgeon

by Tracey_E - 2010-05-03 07:05:02

Talk to your surgeon in advance of your surgery and make sure he knows this is a priority to you. It can be placed between the pectoral muscles, or under the pectorals. Most surgeons automatically place it under the collarbone, just under the skin, and never consider alternate locations because it's the easiest and the least likely to have complications, but that doesn't mean it can't go lower and deeper so it's out of your way. If your dr has never done it this way, or seems at all hesitant, ask about having a plastic surgeon assist. Or you might have to find another dr who's more open to alternate placements, some of them are a bit set in their ways.

Mine is buried also (I'm female, uh, you can't put yours where mine is LOL). It was done by a plastic surgeon, it's totally buried (behind the breast, under the pectoral) and it never gets in my way. I can't even feel the edges of it.

You will be more sore and have a longer recovery doing it this way, but once you heal it should feel good. We all heal differently and have different tolerances for pain so I can only tell you about my experience. I didn't take more than tylenol during the day after the first couple of days, tho I did take something stronger at night to sleep. It wasn't awful, but it dragged on for a while. It takes 6-8 weeks for muscle to heal, so any movement that pulls your chest muscles is going to be sore for that time. I had trouble with things like folding laundry and putting dishes away, anything where you're stretching. By 8 weeks, it was more annoying than painful, unless I over do it. By 12 weeks, I'm back to all my old activities and completely pain free. I always consider the last benchmark, the final sign that I'm 100% again, to be when I can do a push up again. I had my last surgery the last week in Jan and did my first push up last week.

Other than the longer recovery time, the only other downside I can think of is I ended up with two incisions- one for the device and one for the leads. Depending on where they place it, they may not be able to get the leads in the vein from the same incision. Mine is put in from the side, under my arm, so they had to do a second incision to get the leads in the vein then tunnel the leads under to get it to the device. If they do it under the pectoral, they can usually get the leads in from one incision.

Long term, I had a build up of scar tissue after so many surgeries that was getting achy. Not painful, but it was steadily getting worse and I figured it would be painful before my next replacement. When I had my last replacement in Jan, we brought the plastic surgeon back to clean up the scar tissue. It feels terrific now, it was more achy than I thought, lol, I guess it came on so gradually that I never realized how bad it had gotten. That's the only downside I've found in 16 yrs of having it buried. Small price to pay for being able to forget it's there the rest of the time!

Talk to Dr

by tcrabtree85 - 2010-05-04 02:05:22

Hi,
I am 24 welcome to this most amazing club. I have mine burried and would highly suggest you getting it that way no matter what if your a male or female I suggest that. I have gone through 3 pacers and prefer the one being burried deep the most.
Also do some research about covers that you can get to go over your pacer so you can play sports without it getting physically hit. Type it in the search area on this sites its been talked about in the past and they do have guards out there.

Good luck look forward to hearing more from you.

Tammy

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