What does my Pacemaker have stored

I have a St. Judes 5820 installed three weeks ago. My BP and HR has been steady since. I am taking meds for cardiomyopathy and tomorrow I have another echo to see if its changing.

My cardio says we will check out the pacer. Not sure what that means so I need help on what to ask him about what is stored and can be read out.

Does it contain any history to show AFib, as that is what started me into this world of cardiology 4 months ago? AFib before was about very high heart rates followed by very low HRs after medication and needed a pacer to keep HR up. If I have been in AFib since pacer, I don't have any signs other than low energy from cardiomyopathy. I take BP and HR AM and PM and have always been at 70 HR.

I read about it storing P and R waves in my book. What will cardio do with this data, like make adjustments?

Recently here someone asked about what percentage is pacer giving your beats. When I was in hospital there was a little white dot on display that showed the pacer active. Will he give me this percent reading tomorrow if he reads the pacer history?

In the three weeks I have not experienced any thing from the pacer I would consider abnormal.

I do have problems with voice and exam this week revealed a very weak left vocal cord. They believe this may be from the cardiomyopathy and going to wait 30 days to see if voice improves.

Forgive me for my basic questions as I am just learning.

Thanks, Joyce



2 Comments

Lots of really neat data!

by donr - 2013-10-13 10:10:55

First of all, Ask for a copy of the download report. You wil not understand much on it besides your name & the date.

I have a Medtronic, so my output data may be different or have different names. But here's what to expect:

1) a pair of histograms giving the distribution of HR during the period. A histogram is a vertical bar graph. It will also show what percentages of the time your two halves of your heart are paced.

2) a table giving the % of beats were paced or sensed.
Paced means the PM did the job; sensed means the heart worked on its own. There are 4 combos: As,Vs; Ap,Vs; ApVs; Ap,Vp.

3) a count of all arrhythmias you have. Yes it will tell you haw much A-Fib you had.

4) A veritable bookful of data on how your PM is set up. Data on delays, voltages, self testing results.

5) Modes of operation.

6) Your Lower Rate; Upper Tracking Level; Upper Sensor Level.

7) It will NOT show BP. There is no sensor for that.

Meds: You need to tell us what meds you are taking. They can influence how you feel, based on their side effects.

Hope this helped.

Don

Have my first readout!

by joyzam - 2013-10-29 05:10:57

I got my readout yesterday.

I am 83% paced AP-VP, 13% AS-VP , and 2.6% AS-VS, and less than 1 otherwise.

My heart rate was 70 BPM for three weeks and then cardio put me off amiodrome and back on Flec. Since that time I have been in 85-95 BPM so I assume most of this paced occurred in those first three weeks when I stayed at 70.

He did not seem concerned about the high heart rate when we quizzed him and just said we like to keep the rate between 70 and 100.

My AMS shows 8610 episodes and move switch at 16%. Need someone to explain this.

He said to increase the Flec from 50 2x day to 75 2x day to get better rhythm. Does this show I was in AFIB 16 % of time? or something else in this readout shows how much AFib?

I had high A rate episode on 16 Oct at 942AM of 213BPM. Wow, I don't recall anything usual that day or any day since I have had the pacer! It on was for 5 min and 32 sec.

My AT/AF Burden was less than 1%. I read some definitions of Burden but its mostly Greek.

There is a lot more on this printout but maybe this is enough to get some understanding of what this is telling me about my AFib.

My AT/AF Burden was less than 1%. I read some definitions of Burden but its mostly Greek.

You know you're wired when...

You have a little piece of high-tech in your chest.

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