After effects of pacemaker procedure

Not much information here

by AgentX86 - 2020-08-06 17:00:02

Welcome to the club for those who didn't want to join any such organization.

You need to give more information about yourself, your diagnosis, and other pertinent information. There are hundreds of different reasons we have pacemakers and about the same number of different illnesses that we blame on them.

SOB?

by Gotrhythm - 2020-08-06 19:28:11

I notice your pacemaker is two years old.

Is this problem with breathlessness new? Did you have it before the pacemaker? Or did it start with the pacemaker? You didn't say if the feeling of being SOB is accompanied by reduce blood oxygen saturation.

Pacemakers very, very rarely malfunction. But they can only do what they are programmed to do. Sometimes, the pacemaker settings need to be tuned to make them more optimal for us. Do you know what your settings are? When my EP made my response rate more sensitive it made a world of difference in preventing breathlessness on excertion.

More often than you would think,  it turns out response rate hasn't been turned on at all. 

These days, my pulse rate can jump up to 90 when I reach for a pencil--but boy, does a brisk walk feel better!

As AgentX says, there are many, many reasons for SOB--most have nothing to do with pacemakers. Pacemakers rarely malfunction. But needing to having the settings changed is very common.

Addendum

by Gotrhythm - 2020-08-07 16:38:40

While it's unlikely your pacemaker is causing your problem, it's very possible that some adjustments to the settings could help.

Our electrical heart issues change over time--usually getting worse. Even if your settings were perfect 2 years ago, it could be time for some updating. And the fact is, getting the settings just right for you boils down to trial and error. It may take several tries over several months.

Why am I harping on this? Because, of all the possible fixes for SOB, optimizing the settings is the easiest and cheapest.

If it works, You're done. No radiation exposure. No new drugs. No complicated tests.

If it doesn't work, if tinkering with the settings produces no significant change, you haven't really lost anything. At least you haven't been put through a bunch of tests, and you can cross one thing off the possible causes of SOB.

Question: When the cardiologist said he could "find no reason," had he in fact done any tests? What did the tests show? Did he offer to refer you to someone else? Did you ask, if you don't know, what do you think it might be? Where do you suggest I go for some answers?

Almost ten years of living with a heart with electrical issues and a pacemaker has taught me that it behooves us to be as knowledgable as possible about our condition and about our pacemakers. And we cannot wait for doctors to tell us everything and fix us. We cannot hope they will always know what to do. We cannot trust they will always have our best interests in mind.

Let me add, we shouldn't expect them to read our minds. We have to ask questions and keep asking questions until we get helpful answers. 

And when we are convinced that no helpful answers are forthcoming, we have to advocate for ourselves. We need to go somewhere else.