Palpitations and missed beats post implant

• by TDJ
• 2014-03-27 12:03:50
• Complications
• 1506 views
• 2 comments

Hi. I am new, having just found the site while googling my situation last night. Here's my story. I had progressively worse a-fib starting in 2005, that led to 2 ablations, numerous meds and a mini-maze surgery by early 2007. All unsuccessful. I had a 3rd ablation in August 2007 that also failed. During this time frame I was cardioverted, by my wife's count, 24 times. By September 2007 my EF was down to 30, and I submitted to the ablating of the A V node and implant of a bi-ventricular pm/dif. The battery wore down 5 years later, and the right lead was involved in a recall, so in Oct. 2012 I had the lead retracted and replaced, and the current pm implanted. It is a medtronics Protecta XT CRT-D. Everything was fine for the first year, even though I remained in flutter or a-fib 99% of the time. Then in Dec. 2013, the Dr. at a remote devise clinic operated by OSU found that I was actually in rhythm and proceeded to change some of my settings that he said would make me feel better if I were in rhythm. It seems that what the Dr did was to change me from VVIR mode to DDDR, to turn off the VT detection, and decrease the VF rate from >200bpm to >171bpm. (These are all things I found later in comparing clinic visit summary from May 2013 with a subsequent summary from a visit in Dec 2013) I did not feel any better, a little worse if anything, so went into the main devise clinic at OSU in Dec. to have the prior settings returned. The mode was changed back to VVIR, but the other changes to the settings were not returned to the original, as I was told that these would not make any difference. Things were basically OK until around the end of February when I started experiencing episodes of palpitations and some skipped beats that reminded me a whole lot of the a-fib episodes. I sent a phone transmission to the clinic a few weeks ago and after checking into the transmission and my records, the tech/nurse called back and told me that everything looked fine and noted that she did not see any incidents of PVC's of anything else that would be of concern. Since that time, the episodes have become more frequent and longer, interfering with sleep and leaving me tired. I am going to contact the devise clinic and see about arranging to have the other settings reversed, but any thoughts of experiences that anyone has that might be helpful would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.