I have a question regarding pacemaker syndrome. I have a pacemaker for sinus node dysfunction. I also have different atrial arrythmias, including atrial fibrillation. I take amiodarone, cartia, coumadin, proamatine, lasix for heart.
My symptoms have been edema, difficulty lying down with breathing, but also when I lay down my head gets very full like I am standing on my head and my veins pop out. I often can only sleep sitting up. When I saw my EP doctor he said he thinks it is pacemaker syndrome. He said the symptoms are definately heart related. He also said this happens because the atrium and ventricals beat out of sync with each other.
What exactly causes that? Is it strictly the function of the pacemaker, my particular conduction problem, or a combination of the two? Can this always be fixed by changing the mode of the pacemaker?
Also, I am wondering about how an av node ablation is different. Aren't there alot of people that have had AV node ablations, who have their upper and lower chambers out of sync that don't have any edema or other heart failure symptoms?
Sorry so many questions. I am just not quite understanding the problem.
Thankyou so much for taking the time to thoughtfully answer questions.