Switched off?

In a word: No.

by crustyg - 2021-06-09 12:01:33

Your PM cannot turn itself off, even for a few seconds.  What *can* happen is that interference from outside can *appear* to the PM's sensors (which listen on your pacing lead(s)) so that the PM doesn't deliver its own pacing output.

Very powerful radio-frequency signals can do this (which is why the spark-gap of traditional high-current welding is a no-no for PM folk - recall that the very first radio senders, from Marconi's time were in fact spark-gap transmitters), along with some other RF-style signals (hand-held security wands, some types of store theft-prevention gates etc.).

If this had happened to you, it's unlikely to be recorded in your PM's log - usually our boxes are configured to record episodes of tachycardias, PACs/PVCs, episodes of AFib/AFlut, but not the occasional few seconds when the PM detected an apparent normal heart activation (even if it wasn't a real cardiac activation).

Your PM is probably the most thoroughly designed and tested piece of equipment that you will ever encounter - more thoroughly tested than your car, a civil jet-aircraft etc. (and no, this isn't an Airbus versus Boeing comment - both vendors have a long history of 'wrinkles' with their fly-by-wire control systems).  It's up there with NASA probes (the ones that last for decades longer than their published design life - think Voyager etc.).

Turned off

by AgentX86 - 2021-06-09 15:19:51

Much more likely than a pacemaker problem is an arrhythmia. Since you have heart block, I'd guess PVCs. PVCs will fool a pacemaker into thinking that a "normal " beat had occurred and will start its timing for the next. If another PVC comes along, the timer gets reset again. Meanwhile the ventricles aren't completely filling with blood, so the heart isn't pumping as much as it should.

episode

by dwelch - 2021-06-12 23:16:38

you can have a pvc or some episode, where the device actually fires too quick rather than stopping for a while, the chambers were pumped out then a pulse came again, and there was nothing or little to pump out, then it has to fill again, so to you it feels like a skipped beat or skipped beats, but its really extra beats.  

You can ceratinly either use the take home box or go in and get hooked up and they can look at the log on the device to see if there was an event.  Make a note somewhere the day maybe even the time it happened so you can compare notes with events logged in the device.