SETTINGS

I received my second shock from ICD this week and they talked about changing the settings.Had 1 VT 187bpm treated with x3 bursts of ATP,x3 RAMP.All ATP failed so they want to increase aggressiveness of ATP regime as failed on VT.Struggling to understand what all this means.EP explained that if they changed setting would probably get more shocks but as I get absolutely no warning I am to be shocked (luckily I have been laying down resting when had shock),if I was standing I could injure myself as would be knocked to my feet.Would appreciate any input on this.tks.

3 Comments

settings

by ianhorsfall1 - 2014-03-28 02:03:57

Hey
it may as well be in Chinese i don't understand all the stuff they told me with my ICD all i can make out from it that VT ventricular tachycardia so i assume you have arrhythmia problem i think medical professionals forget that this makes no sense to normal folk ..wish i could help sorry
ian

asfasf

by boxxed - 2014-03-28 12:03:35

ICD's start with ATP (anti tachy pacing) before it resorts to shocks. Think of some VT rhythms as a loop that goes around and around and around. Burst pacing ATP can sometimes break the loop. The ICD paces very quickly several times, faster than the rate of your rhythm. So hypothetically, if you had a VT that was 200bpm, it may try to pace you @ 220bpm 8 times. That's one set of ATP. Ramps and Scans are types of ATP. Going back to the hyopthetical 200bpm rhythm with 220bpm ATP Burst pacing, you can have it set so instead of:

(1st pace) 220bpm - (2nd pace) 220bpm - (3rd pace) 220bpm...etc

You can have:

(1st pace) 220bpm - (2nd pace) 222bpm - (3rd pace) 225bpm.

Alternative you can have it so:

(1st set of 8 paces @ 220)
(2nd set of 8 paces @ 222)
(3rd set of 8 paces @ 225)

So as you can tell, there's a ton of parameters with how it actually burst paces. Ultimately, they're considering making it more aggressive and hopefully setting it so the ATP can successfully terminate the rhythm or else the ICD will end up giving up with ATP and delivered shocks.

Ian: Sylvia is lucky...

by donr - 2014-03-29 07:03:25

...consider all those hosts for ICD's who get NO explanation of what is happening. At least she had a decent enough explanation to bring it here & ask. Now she has knowledge, albeit basic, that starts her on the way to fully understanding her device.

Donr

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