1st PM followed by pericarditis

Hi,
I have been reading some of the posts and found the various ages of patients, and your return to exercise very encouraging.

I'm 31 years old and received my first dual chamber PM Jan 8/15.
I have tachy-brady syndrome. The bradyarrhythmias ranged from sinus brady and pauses to second degree heart block. I am paced 78% of the time, and noticed an immediate change after surgery with my symptoms. Recovery was going really well. I was able to go for small hikes and ride on a recumbent stationary bike, activities that I was unable to do for several weeks prior to getting the PM. This gave me a lot of hope that I'd be able to start returning to my passions of mountain biking, backpacking and skate skiing with the PM at the end of my 6 week activity restriction.

But 1 1/2 weeks ago I was diagnosed with severe pericarditis and a small pericardial effusion, secondary to the surgery.

I am still being treated with several medications, the symptoms have not subsided and am headed back to hospital in two days to be reevaluated if I'll require draining/ additional treatment.

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this and how long it was before you could get back to activity once the inflammation was gone. I was so looking forward to my PM activity restriction being up soon but now I am waiting to recover from the pericarditis and hoping it won't impact future activity with possible recurrences/complications.

If anyone has had experience with this I'd love to hear from you and put some of my worries at ease :)

2 Comments

Paricardial Window Surgery

by donb - 2015-02-12 09:02:32

Hi, From your posting I see a duplication of my situation a couple years ago. As you're just starting life this problem should be quite simple to correct. Usually medication is tried but in most cases surgery is done to drain the excess fluid build-up around your heart.
In surgery they do a small incision & insert a drain tube. In my situation being an old person & having this brought on from having a chemical stress test it took some time to get back to normal. Wife, retired cardiac nurse just said 2 weeks at the most to get back to normal.
I don't remember if I posted my complete history but it might be under "search" upper right corner. As this was about 3 years ago there's a lot of info I could share. Let me know if you like I would be happy to give you complete details of my recovery process. I believe I also read recently someone else had a similar problem after their pacemaker implant. Anyhow, in your case just having your implant this can happen. The main objective is get it under control which might be able with medication, but don't put if off.
I just did a diary of my 83 years of life I've had 15 surgeries & still doing great !!

Surgery

by donb - 2015-02-12 10:02:42

Hi, Just went back on my history & I sent details of my bout in the "Private Messages" section. Again, just discount some of my history as I'm sure you won't have to go my route.
DonB

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