Who Needs a Pacemaker?
Cardiologists recommend pacemakers to patients for a number of reasons. The most common reason is when a patient's heart is beating too slow or there are long pauses between heartbeats.
A pacemaker may be helpful if:
- Aging or heart disease damages your sinus node's ability to set the correct pace for your heartbeat. Such damage can make your heart beat too slow, or it can cause long pauses between heartbeats. The damage also can cause your heart rhythm to alternate between slow and fast.
- You need to take certain heart medicines (such as beta blockers), but these medicines slow down your heartbeat too much.
- The electrical signals between your heart's upper and lower chambers are partially or completely blocked or slowed down (this is called heart block). Aging, damage to the heart from a heart attack, or other heart conditions can prevent electrical signals from reaching all the heart's chambers.
- You often faint due to a slow heartbeat. For example, this may happen if the main artery in your neck that supplies your brain with blood is sensitive to pressure. In you have this condition, just quickly turning your neck can cause your heart to beat slower than normal. When that happens, not enough blood may flow to your brain, causing you to faint.
- You have had a medical procedure to treat an arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. A pacemaker can help regulate your heartbeat after the procedure.
- You have heart muscle problems that cause electrical signals to travel through your heart muscle too slow. (Your pacemaker will provide cardiac resynchronization therapy for this problem.)
To decide whether a pacemaker will benefit you, your cardiologist will consider any symptoms you have of an irregular heartbeat, such as dizziness, unexplained fainting, or shortness of breath. He or she also will consider whether you have a history of heart disease, what medicines you're currently taking, and the results of heart tests.