Hi, i started suffering from bradycardia in April this year. 2 stays in hospital and lots of ecgs, monitors (cardiocall, halters etc), tilt test, angiogram (showed some mild myocardial bridging), exercise stress test and mri (i think that's everything!) and they've not been able to find out what's causing it. HR drops to 30bpm from a few minutes to a few hours. Since April I've had around 15 episodes where my HR has dropped into the 30's for anything from a few minutes to a few hours.
At one point i went for 6 weeks without a significant drop and at the moment i have gone for around 8 weeks although i have a fairly constant feeling of pressure in my chest/heart area and have a lot of feeling of heart 'wobbles'. I wouldn't even call them palpitations. A wobble is the closest i can come to describe it!
My consultant has decided to put a pacemaker in to stop my HR dropping below 60bpm. If anything my HR seems to be higher than normal at the moment but with fairly constant 'wobbling'!
My partner is concerned that i don't actually need a pacemaker and i'm just not sure what to do.
I'm 55 yr old female who is generally fairly fit. I was very fit until 4 years ago when i got quite serious pneumonia followed by pleurisy and since then haven't managed to get back to the same levels of fitness.
Anyone have any advice for me!
Thanks
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Campmyvan
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I've just had an ICD fitted. My consultant considered that at some time in the future I could be at risk of an arrhythmia which would cause a cardiac arrest and that fitting an ICD would be an insurance against a cardiac arrest .
I'm no expert, nor am any of us on here, but if my consultant says an ICD would be a good precaution, and considering the cost of these devices and that doctors don't elect procedures/operations lightly and only carry them out where there will be a benefit to the patient, them I'm happy to follow their advice.
Have you had a full discussion as to why he/she wants to implant it? The ICD was suggested to me at a follow up review - I asked could I talk to someone in greater detail, and was called back to the hospital two weeks later where I spoke to the consultant who actually carried out the procedure. I did some research in those two weeks and had 99% decided to go ahead, but it was nice to have a full discussion as to the why and how of it all was fully explained to me.
Thanks for the advice. I actually had another drop yesterday, not for long but long enough for me to realise this is the best thing for me!
I did have a good chat with the consultant when we met and he said while he couldn't guarantee it would solve my problems, they would also be able to monitor what was going on with my heart so hopefully one way or another it will get me back to a better state!
Having one implanted is a fairly routine procedure, I posted a report of having my ICD implanted, the process is exactly the same between pacemaker and ICD.
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