no juice

I have been short of breath (SOB) since january 2011. Had PM inplanted 7+ yrs. This week I went to my EP for routine check up. My EKG read 62 for my HR. Right away I know there was sometime wrong. My PM is set at 70-120 BPM. Sure enough, The nurse checked my pacemaker, the computer read out said ,I had a significant incident where most of my juice was depleted, on July 13 2011. That explaned my extreme SOB over the last 3 weeks. SOB and pacemaker were diffently related. I was relieved, because I was convinced I had Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), They are replacing PM next week,

Why did not the system pick up on this power problem when I phoned in my pacemaker in june or before.

JP

2 Comments

VVI OR EOL MODE

by SMITTY - 2011-08-06 04:08:24

Hi JP,

I see you have a Medtronic PM, as i do. My guess is your PM went into what is called the VVI mode. This is a mode where the PM cuts out some features and become a fixed rate PM in order to extend the battery life. I went to bed one night and everything fine. The next morning when I got up I felt like hell.

I checked my heart rate and found it was 65 and I have a low set point of 80. I had not idea what was wrong, except I knew something was. I called the PM Clinic and got a PM checkup and learned my PM had gone into VVI mode and that I would have to get a new PM. That one was 9 years old.

I had gotten a PM checkup a couple of months earlier and it showed the estimated remaining battery life as 9 mo. Turned out to be more like 9 weeks. Again, I'll guess the reason the phone checkup didn't catch the impending VVI mode on yours is the battery was not close enough to its End Of Life stage.

I got a new PM about a week later and everything was fine thereafter.

Just another little, detail they fail to tell us about.

Good luck,S
Smitty

Battery life indicator

by ElectricFrank - 2011-08-07 12:08:34

There is actually no accurate way to predict the state of charge of the battery in the pacer. The indicator is only an estimate based on battery voltage, impedance, and pacemaker current draw.

Most of us are familiar with the nightly self test of outr pacers. One of the tests run is the pacing energy required at the electrodes to cause the heart to beat. So if anything changes in our heart that requires more energy the pacer will increase it using more battery current. The same thing can happen with a mode change. Even a time of being more active with a higher average HR will use more energy. The pacer has no way of knowing what will happen in the future.

In this case the responsibility is ours. If we start feeling SOB or non responsive HR it is up to us to report it. THERE IS NO WAY the doctors office can say there is no problem without at least asking for a phone or office test. YOU are to blame if you just put up with it til the next office visit.

There have been several reports of very low battery conditions reported on the site and in at least one case my take was the person came very close to cardiac arrest and death. I didn't want to scare the person so I didn't mention it at the time.

THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF FOLKS. YOUR LIFE IS AT STAKE. Maybe it is more important to you to be a nice dead person that an obnoxious alive one.

frank

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