What is the purpose of a pacemaker monitor?

Factual Questions
1

My mother was sent home with a monitor after getting a pacemaker. I know it was used for her remote appointments by the doctor. Her pacemaker history was sent and it could adjust the pacemaker.

I mistakenly thought it was a heart monitor. My mother’s health declined and she was on hospice. I expected a call from her doctor. She passed away and still no call. Didn’t the monitor alert the office there was a problem with her heart rhythm? No pulse should indicate something and send a alert.

The monitor is sitting on my table. Not sure what to do with it. It has no value to me now. It’s a unwelcome reminder of my mom and the difficult last years of her life.

2

Oh dear… I am so very sorry. I don’t know how the monitors work, so likely someone else will chime in. I am just so distressed to read your post… my heart is breaking for you…

3

Thanks ThelmaLou. I’m still adjusting.

My mom was 90 and lived a healthy life for most of it.

She really should have gotten the pacemaker a decade ago. Walking across the house exhausted her. We finally convinced her to get a pacemaker 4 years ago.

She could have stayed more active with a pacemaker earlier in her life.

4

Was it a Holter Monitor llike this? It is basically a portable ECG that records heart activity. It is not sending out any information, it is recording but not actively communicating. The doctors can retrieve the information when the montor is removed and turned in.

Holter Monitor | Johns Hopkins Medicine

5

I linked my mothers monitor. I felt better believing any irregular heart beats would trigger a call from her doctor. That wasn’t the case.

I never searched for this information before today. I should have looked for it after my moms surgery.

I have the first model. A box with a :heart:. It lights up when connected.

6

When I got my pacemaker 7+ years ago they gave me one of these.
Called a Merlin. Does it look like that?

My pacemaker records data all the time and the Merlin referenced above sits on my bedside table and collects the data from my pacemaker every night, about 2am, IIRC. If anything happens outside of pre-set parameters it sends an alert to my cardiologist’s office and they call me the next day. Sometimes they’ll want me to push a button and transmit to them manually, and sometimes they’ll want me to come in and get checked out, but it’s not an immediate response sorta thing,

They do look at the data every 3 months or so in any case, sometimes remotely and sometimes in their office. (about every other time.)
My Merlin can communicate over a land line, (remember those?) or over the internet. It has a little transmitter about the size and shape of an older thumb drive that plugs into the side of the Merlin.

ETA: I see that your Mom had a different device, but I’m leaving my post here in case it’s useful information for somebody.

7

Your description sounds very much like my mother’s monitor. I think the nurse said the data was collected and sent at night. It uses a cellular connection.

8

I never had a pacemaker but i did have to wear a hear monitor after my stroke a few years back. Now I’m wearing a cardiac loop (implanted) in case I get A-Fib down the road. i have the app on my phone for it and it sends info to my cardiologists’s office .

9

I have a pace maker and the monitor. It is a Boston Scientific.
My understanding is every night it will download from my pacemaker the information about my heart for the last 24 hours. Then transmit the data to Boston Scientific. They will then forward it to Kaiser. If there are any abnormalities it will then be forwarded to my heart doctor. Who will act or not act according to my patient information.

Also if at any time I think my heart is not beating right I can call Kaiser and then a doctor will get back to me. Hopefully in a short period of time. The doctor may have me push a button on the monitor and he then can read how my heart is doing right then.

There may have been no call because at 90 the doctor’s may have felt it was nature working and your mother may have had a DNR on record.

But I am sorry for you loss.

10

I’m very sorry for your loss; and also for the apparent miscommunication with your mother’s medical providers about what her monitor was for.

I have a different setup: the pacemaker works with an app. The app’s supposed to be on a phone, but my phone doesn’t do apps, so they set it up on my iPad; it’s not entirely happy about that (it keeps telling me not to force close the app when I haven’t force closed the app), but it does seem to work.

It sends info once every three months automatically. It can also send messages at other times, and alerts if something’s wrong – but it came with clear instructions NOT to rely on it as an emergency alert device. When I investigated this, I found out that the company that reads its info works Monday through Friday 9 to 5, and monitor reports aren’t checked continuously, or at all outside those hours. So the app could send as drastic an alert as it can – but if it sends it at, say, 4:59 on Friday, or maybe some time sooner than that, the soonest anybody would possibly see it would be Monday morning at 9; and it probably wouldn’t be the first one they checked on Monday morning, either.

I think that, although your mother had a different type of monitor, it probably basically worked the same way.

Information read by the monitoring company does get sent to my cardiologist’s office; but I don’t think that’s instant either, even after they’ve read it.

Also, if the internet’s down, or I’m not close enough to the device with the app on it, any information the pacemaker gets is held until it can access the device again.

If I think my heart’s not beating right, I’d call the cardiologist or 911. If I were superanxious about wanting to be revived in time if necessary, or about being rescued from a situation in which I couldn’t use the phone (which I do usually carry), I’d get a device meant to deal with such situations specifically. Not only are pacemaker monitors not meant or equipped to do that, but also one might want rescuing even though one’s heart was beating OK (from a bad fall, for instance.)

– I would call the medical office she got the pacemaker from and ask how to return the monitor. I think the things are expensive, and they can probably re-program it so that someone else can use it.

11

Did her doctor know she was in hospice? If so, then he probably felt there was no need to seek clarification of the inevitable.

12

Hospice may have notified her doctors. Mom was only on hospice for a couple months.

They have rules. No trips to the hospital. No IV antibiotics. Ect. They offer pain meds and keep the patient comfortable.

The nursing home moved my mom to a different room last winter. Left the monitor behind. I had to retrieve it and plug in by her bed.