MRI pacemaker settings?

I need a cardiac mri. I appreciate if anyone with a pacer who has had a mri to reply. Thanks in advance.

Did you get a Metronics tech assigned to your appointment to turn your pacer to SureScan mode before the mri, stayed there to supervise the conditional mri settings during the scan, and afterwards turn off the SureScan feature?

Anything else they did?

Nobody has a pacemaker and needed a MRI??

Wow…

Well, it's a fairly small group of people who ever get a chest MRI, and an even smaller subset of those people have pacemakers, so it's not that surprising. But getting an MRI with a pacemaker is pretty routine these days because virtually all modern pacemakers are MRI-safe.

I don’t want any “oops” that will rip my leads out of my heart. There must be some who get chest mri for breast cancer. I used to get them yearly. It’s a routine surveillance tool in diagnosis.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2021 10:22PM by susan.d.

Understood, but the number of people with afib issues who need chest MRIs is still a small number, even if we include breast cancer patients. Oops don't really happen with MRIs these days. All modern implanted devices come with MRI guidance, and that guidance is most are MRI safe. I don't think it's something you need to be concerned with.

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Carey
Understood, but the number of people with afib issues who need chest MRIs is still a small number, even if we include breast cancer patients. Oops don't really happen with MRIs these days. All modern implanted devices come with MRI guidance, and that guidance is most are MRI safe. I don't think it's something you need to be concerned with.

Curious as Shannon has told me he needed a special MRI machine because of his pacer?

His pacer is rather old. Newer ones are designed to be more MRI tolerant and usually have a mode they can be set to during the MRI that protects them.

My pacer has a serial number as well as each lead has its own number. My imaging center was able immediately to look up the numbers to confirm I have a SureScan MRI tolerant pacemaker and leads before I as given an appointment.

The following is from a Lady that is a Mayor in Kansas. She has been fighting Covid for a number of months. The reason I am posting this is because her discussions with her doctor that a pacemaker which can sense an irregular heartbeat and can restore a regular pace. I have never heard of a pacemaker being able to do that, they have tried but it just doesn't work. Perhaps there is something new. Maybe Covid is causing AF in some people?

De La Isla told the station she has tried to get back to her exercise routine, but “in the last month or two, things have gotten more complicated.” That led to discussions with her doctor about implanting a pacemaker, which can sense an irregular heartbeat. The small devices can restore a patient’s heart rate to the regular pace.

Mine has such a setting but it’s hit or miss. It prevented three afib last month but not for three others, one that required an ecv. I am getting it reset again because it does pace my heart if it’s lower than 60 but in tachycardia it hasn’t been helpful yet. I still get 160s tachycardia. I do have a setting set at 172 hr that switches the atrium lead off and the ventricle lead on if it’s higher than 172.

Liz- read the following site:
[www.medtronicacademy.com]

information in pacemaker settings.

I know that a pacer will kick in if your heart rate goes lower than what the pacer is set at. Mine is set at 50 BPM at the low end and if my heart rate goes lower the pacer kicks in, mine isn't set for the high end as I never had any problems that way. i was talking about when getting an episode of AF the pacer doesn't stop it, they tried to do that but it hasn't worked at least not to my knowledge. That would be great if it did, I wouldnt be in AF today. That doctor telling that woman that a pacer could stop an irregular heartbeat, I don't think that is true. Everybody could get a pacer instead of an ablation.

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Elizabeth
Everybody could get a pacer instead of an ablation.

Not necessarily for everyone. I would gladly live with your type of non symptomatic low heart rate permanent afib any day than have my daily pacer problems.

Pacemakers that can sense afib and pace you out of them were tried a few years back, but they simply didn't work well.