Battery powered tools

I've had my DD Pacemaker for almost a year now and most od the time I really forget I have it until this morning. Yesterday I was using a cultivator with a battery pack. I'm left handed and of course the pm was implanted on the left side. Totally forgot about the warnings that are in the book. When I woke this morning I felt bad and I took my BP and Pulse thinking that I may be in A-fib. Nope but my pulse registered 47 and my pm is set at 70.Humm I got a cup of tea took it again and my pulse was 154 the atrial setting is 130. So I guess my pm is out of whack. Everything has settled down now. Could it have been my using the battery operated cultivator causing EMI?

4 Comments

PM not necessarily ...

by donr - 2014-09-29 07:09:11

...out of Whack.

If it were the battery powered device, it would have to be a whopping big battery & you would have to have had wires running right over the PM to cause a strong enough field to affect the PM. Also, it would NOT have a residual effect on you. t would have affected you right then & the affect gone away as soon as you stopped using the cultivator.

Also - the PM cannot slow down the HR - all it can do is STOP pacing & let the HR go to its intrinsic value under the current conditions. Set at 130, it would stop pacing you at that point & just let your heart run free. Or it would have only paced every other beat. Sounds like that was a pretty wicked cup of tea - lots of caffeine to stimulate the heart. If it all settled down now, sounds like you COULD have had an episode of Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVC's), where the ventricles do exactly that - contract early. If you are not practiced at sensing a pulse, you will NOT feel the premature contraction - it may well be too wimpy for you to sense.. If you were having a run of PVC's, or if every other one was
a PVC, you would naturally count a slower pulse. Call your Cardio & tell him about it - if it was PVC's, there will be a record of them in the downloaded data.

No guarantee this is the case, but it is one scenario that fits the data you gave.

The HIGH rate could also well have been caused by anxiety over thinking that your PM has quit on you.

Donr

Lots of Jolting....

by donr - 2014-09-29 08:09:32

......can cause the RR to function & run your HR high. Depends on your PM & how its RR sensitivity is set up. It should not be still affecting you the next AM, however.

How do you feel tonight?

Donr

Shaken

by Gotrhythm - 2014-09-29 11:09:28

Here is my experience for your consideration. When I am shaken--like going down a bumpy road with bad shock absorbers--I start getting many more PVCs. The pulse/ox will drop to about half the base setting of 65. Or it might jump up to over 100 bpm. (The pulse/ox is notorious for being unreliable where there are rhythm disorders.) Not that I think it is, but it does feel like my PM is out of whack, like it's not working with my heart but against it. The effect can last for some time after the shaking has stopped.

The only cultivators I have any experience with produce lots of jolting and jerking for the operator trying to keep the cultivator in line. So the cultivator could be the culprit, but because of the shaking, not the battery.

Just a thought.

This also happened to me with a battery powered tool

by mrsbrooks - 2020-06-08 12:37:35

My experience was similar - used a battery operated hedge trimmer. Pulse went up over 100. Scared me so much that I went to emergency. They said nothing was wrong. But it took a week for my pulse to get back from the 90's to my normal range which is in the 70's and sometimes mid-80's. Thanks for your info because I do now think it was the vibration of this tool that may have caused this condition in the pacer. And the pulse/ox finger thing was also acting out of whack that whole time. I have a St. Jude's device for bradycardia. Otherwise it works geat - it's my second pacer in life so far.

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