Lead Extraction days out question

Do you still .....

by donr - 2019-09-03 00:24:37

.....teach little kids to sing "I'm a Little Teapot?"  If not. write me after the procedure & I'[ll give you a run through. 

The surgeon you talked to was correct about  "...it depends."   All because it does!  I've never had a roto-rooter job, but there a a bunch of us who have. 

First a question or two.  How does the 31 yo lead come into play?  Usually those infant leads are external to the vaqscular system & are abdominal   My memory tells me that they don't start  vascular leads till you are a teenager,  stopped rapid growth and have suffucuent available vouume in the upper chest cavity to accomodate a PM.    You did not mention how many vascullar leads you have, so I'm guessing that it is three at best - unless they are going to take out the probably abdominal lead, also, since it does nothing.  Three leads is usually the max capacity of the  subclavian vein, so they will most likely root out all of them while they are at it, leaving you space to get to age 60 or so.  The simplest case I've heard of here is about 3 days in the hospital & a week or so recuperating.  I assume they told you that they have a thoracic surgeon available in case anything goes wrong & they have to open your chest in a hurry to fix it.  That is the worst case & may mean a week plus in the hospital & m ore recuperating time at home.

This is a serious procedure & should not be taken lightly, so plan for the worst & expect the best.  Last I read, under the hands of a skillful, experienced surgeon who is qualified (About 100 procedures per year) the success rate is about 98%.  That's not too shabby for a complicated procedure.

Come back when you are out & let us know how it went - you can add to the knowledge of the entire group.

Wish you the best.

Donr

Lead info

by secalceta - 2019-09-03 00:46:58

I have  5 leads total 4 are intravenous and 1 is epicardial.  1 is clipped back from when I was an infant from when I had my first replacement at age 4. They had  2 new leads implanted at that time,  However they had an oops moment when they were placing them and I had emergency open heart at that time. So they sutured them in place. The last lead I had placed Intravenously was at age 15. And the epicardial lead came into play when they added a crt device and were unable to place the 3rd lead intravenously. From what I've been told after about 10 years the amount of scar tissue from the lead placement doesn't increase, however when you're younger the body absorbs more calcium turning the old scar tissue into something more like little bones. This is how my surgeon who will be doing the procedure described it. 

The way they talk about the clipped back lead it sounds like it was intravenous however starting from  age 4 and up those definitely were. The guy who did the placement put a bunch of extra slack in the leads.