About 3 million people in the United States rely on pacemakers to keep their hearts pumping at a regular rhythm. The peace of mind knowing that your heart is functioning the way it should is a huge benefit of the pacemaker, even if you have to make some small adjustments to your life to accommodate the new device.
Here at Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists, our team of cardiology experts routinely implants pacemakers to help our patients with heart issues like arrhythmias and congestive heart failure. Simply put, these little devices can be lifesavers, which more than makes up for the minor inconveniences of having a pacemaker, which we review here.
Each heartbeat is initiated by an electrical current from your sinus node that travels through your heart, causing contractions in the upper and lower chambers that circulate the blood through. On average, your blood travels a whopping 12,000 miles each day, and all this motion is powered by the electrical activity in your heart.
If you have an issue like an arrhythmia — a condition that affects up to 5% of the general population — your heart beats irregularly. If your heart beats too fast, too slow, or erratically, it can place you at a much higher risk for serious heart disease like heart attack or stroke.
With a pacemaker, we help your heart keep better time as the device emits electrical impulses that regulate your heart’s electrical activity.
Once we implant the pacemaker, we pre-program the device so there isn’t much that you need to do on your end — you simply let your pacemaker do what it’s designed to do.
In fact, after we implant your pacemaker, we want you to get back to being active since exercise is key to good cardiovascular health.
The only place where you might run into issues is being around anything that might interfere with the electric impulses emitted by your pacemaker. For example, airport security machines have the potential to be problematic — though they rarely are. Still, we supply you with a pacemaker card that you should carry and show to security agents for separate screening
Other devices that might interfere with your pacemaker include:
A good rule of thumb is that anything that can potentially interfere with the impulses your pacemaker generates should be kept about 6 inches from the device. You can, of course, use your cell phone, but we suggest that you use the hands-free speaker setting or place the phone on your right ear.
When it comes to headphones, the concern is the magnet inside these devices. So, please keep earbuds out of your chest pocket when you aren’t using them and don’t wear large headphones around your neck for long periods.
Rest assured, we will review all these guidelines with you in person after you get your pacemaker, and we’re here to answer any questions you might have after we implant the device.
If you’d like to learn more about life with a pacemaker, please don’t hesitate to contact our office in Mountain View, California, to schedule a consultation with one of our heart health experts.
