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Tachycardia in the presence of a pacemaker
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Atrial fibrillation in the presence of dual chamber pacemaker.
No.
The heart’s native atrial activity in patients with atrial flutter/fibrillation causes atrial sensing, which triggers the ventricular pacing at the pacemaker’s maximal preprogrammed rate.
The differential diagnosis of wide complex tachycardia with pacing spikes includes pacemaker mediated tachycardia and runaway pacemaker syndrome.
Deactivation of atrial lead.
The main purpose of a dual chamber pacemaker is to achieve atrioventricular synchrony. This is achieved by the atrial lead sensing atrial depolarisation and triggering the ventricular lead to depolarise the ventricle after some atrioventricular delay. In patients with no native atrioventricular conduction as in complete heart block, if the native atrial rate increases, the ventricular lead follows suit and discharges at the corresponding rate to maintain atrioventricular synchrony. However, the maximum rate at which the ventricular lead can respond is usually programmed at 120–130 beats/min to prevent very rapid ventricular rates.
Pacemaker mediated
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- Tachycardia in the presence of a pacemaker
- S Menon, H Hafeez, T Verjee, R Sivakumar
Postgrad. Med. J. 2004 80: 119.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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