new noise found on lead

During my device clinic download Friday, they found new noise on the ventricular lead. It had triggered a report of a run of Ventricular Tachycardia in March from the home monitor. They had me press my hands very hard against each other at chest level and this duplicated the event. Anyone have similar experiences, and how did they solve the problem?

3 Comments

Noise

by golden_snitch - 2015-04-19 02:04:27

What did your doctor tell you?

I have had lots of noise on my atrial lead, and peaks in the impedance indicating that it was broken. This wasn't found at a regular check-up, though, but was found because I had been complaining about arrhythmias. I pace about 94% on my atrial lead, so no suprise that I felt that the lead was not functioning properly. In my case, the lead had to be replaced. There was no other way to fix this problem.

I have heard, though, that in some patients changing the lead to unipolar helps. If you don't use your ventricular lead much, maybe the unipolar setting could buy you some time, until you need to get it replaced. Also, as long as it's functioning well and not causing any other issues than false VT detections, it's surely safe just to keep an eye on it.

Best wishes!

noise

by mikenall - 2015-04-19 11:04:30

I was visiting the device clinic so they could check for pacemaker dermatitis, and download was only done because I was there and it hadn't been done for 10 months. My ventricular lead has only been pacing at 2% so it's rarely in use. They turned the automatic sensing off and adjusted RV sensitivity from auto to 4.5 mV which eliminated oversensing, and have me scheduled for another in person download in 3 months. It was later on Friday afternoon and the Dr. was scrubbed in for a surgery while I was there and I didn't see him.

Sounds good

by golden_snitch - 2015-04-19 12:04:53

Sounds like that'll do for now. As I said, my faulty lead only had to be replaced soon, because I was using it 94% of the time, and was having arrhythmias because of the fracture. Hope that you'll be fine with those settings, until it's time for pacemaker replacement anyways. Good luck!

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