Lead Moved?

Hi, I had a DDDR pacemaker fit a few months ago as I had irregular low heart beat. Till a few days ago it was working well producing a heatbeat in 70s. But last few days I find my heart beat drops to 40s sometimes during movement sometimes it is in 70s. Im also expriencing palpitations. Can anyone please tell why it is so? What to do?.

4 Comments

suspicious

by Tracey_E - 2014-09-17 05:09:51

When in doubt, call and ask to be checked. It's highly unlikely they came undone after the first few weeks, but find out to be sure.

Palpitations can make it hard to count with little beats between the strong beats you feel.

My Mistate

by dmoo - 2014-09-17 09:09:48

You are right TraceyE. Thanks. I got it checked and the pacemaker guy said everything was ok. Also he said I probably sometimes cant feel a few beats when I check them manually.

when in doubt

by Tracey_E - 2014-09-17 10:09:44

Glad everything is ok!!! It's always best to call and find out for sure. They'd rather have us come in for a false alarm than tough it out when something is going on.

A possibility...

by donr - 2014-09-24 08:09:49

...is an event called a PVC - Premature Ventricular Contraction. It will cause you to NOT sense some of your heart beats - they are there, you just do not sense them. NOR do you catch them w/ your fingers while taking your pulse - you are not practiced at finding them.

Try this description of how they feel to the novice & see if itr is what you experience. This is something I wrote several months back for a person experiencing the same sort of thing::

Begin paste:
To start, let's confirm that you can sense a true PVC.

When you feel your heart beat, it's the Ventricles contracting. The Atria do not contract strongly enough for you to feel it. The only way to sense Atrial contraction is w/ a stethoscope & it is noticeably weaker in sound than the Ventricles contracting. I believe the "official " medical description is "lub-DUB" where the DUB is the ventricular contraction. (If I'm backwards, someone will call me on it!)

When you are just sitting there doing nothing w/ your mind in neutral, what you will feel goes something like this:
ThumP, ThumP, ThumP, thump, pause, THUMP, ThumP, ThumP.....

ThumP = a normal beat
thump - a wimpy beat - the PVC!
pause = a short pause that surprises & scares you
THUMP = a heavy beat that really catches your attention

The wimpy "thump" is because the ventricles contract prior to being full, so there's not enough blood in them for it to be noticeable - MOF, you may not feel this beat at all - some people do not, giving them a full 1 second or better sensed lack of a beat.

The pause is a compensating thing to help the heart get back on track into a Normal Sinus Rhythm.

The THUMP is the ventricles contracting when being slightly more full than normal, due to the pause.

It is the disturbance in regularity of your rhythm that catches your attention.

Single PVC's are harmless, but are disturbing. Consistent, long runs of them can lead to other problems, more serious in nature - like V-Tach or V-Fib. But I am evidence that singles are benign - w/ my monthly count by my PM.
End Paste.

Your PM will NOT let you skip beats (Unless you have a problem w/ intermittent ventricular block, when it does let you skip them intentionally to preclude too much ventricular pacing for a reason.)

By your description, sounds like you are having multiple PVC's that you cannot sense, hence the reporting of a HR lower than your lower limit,

Donr




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