MidnightCall Magazine
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News From Israel MagazineAre pacemakers dangerous?
I have had a pacemaker for the past 15 years and am well aware of the problem I read about recently in one of my medical journals.
A reader sent me a copy of an in-depth study that was conducted at The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. More than 23,000 patients throughout the state of New Jersey were involved in the study.
From 1997 to 1999, 11,426 patients with no history of heart failure had pacemakers implanted. These patients were matched with a similar group of patients who did not have a pacemaker.
Each patient was approximately 75 years old, and all were similar in race, sex and in prevalence of heart-related conditions. Both groups were closely monitored over the course of the next three years and an amazing conclusion was reached: The people who possessed the most common pacemaker types were more likely than those people without pacemakers either to be hospitalized for gradual heart failure or to die. The reason is because the pacemakers stimulate one or both of the heart’s right chambers to contract when the heart rate slows down, but do not allow the four chambers (the right and left atria, and the right and left ventricles), to beat in the same order as a healthy, normal heart. Please read that last sentence again because I have tried to explain it as simply as possible. This out-of-sync beating puts extra stress on the heart’s main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, and in some patients, causes congestive heart failure, in which the heart gradually stops pumping.
Approximately 175,000 pacemakers are implanted annually in the United States. This means hundreds of thousands of patients are involved, and you probably know at least one of them. If this includes you, my advice is to remain calm. Make an appointment with your cardiologist and take this article with you. I have already made an appointment to see the heart surgeon who implanted my pacemaker to discuss this issue.
“The way we’ve practiced cardiac pacing for the last three decades must be abandoned,” said Dr. Michael Sweeney, director of heart devices implantation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
So contact your heart specialist if you are a pacemaker patient who is experiencing such heartfailure symptoms as shortness of breath, if you become easily fatigued, or if you feel faint. You may just need to have the timing adjusted on your pacemaker.
Some patients need to have their pacemakers replaced with a new type designed to prevent damaging strain on the left ventricle. This could prevent heart failure. Who needs a pacemaker? A person whose heart beats too slowly, too rapidly, or irregularly. Symptoms may include fluttering sensations in the chest known as palpitations, lightheartedness, fainting spells, chest pains, or shortness of breath. Your doctor will perform various tests and will then refer you to a cardiologist who will decide whether or not you need a pacemaker.
The human heart is one of God’s greatest creations; it is about the size of a man’s fist, yet it daily pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels! “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works” (Psalm 139:14).
* Dr. John Cionci is a Philadelphia native and graduate of Central High School, University of Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He is a member of the American Osteopathic Association and Chair of the AIDS Association. Dr. Cionci has been a practicing physician since 1950.