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Suggest Treatment For Dizziness In A Person With Pace Maker
Question: suffer from dizziness and frequent falls have had pacemaker installed
Brief Answer:
Needs investigation
Detailed Answer:
Hello,
Gait instability and falls are major problems particularly in advanced age. If your heart rate and blood pressure are acceptable during the dizziness attacks then a pacemaker problem can be excluded.
Other potential causes include:
- vertigo (the ears can be causing it sometimes)
- neurological problems (peripheral neuropathy for example), which reduces the sensation of the body position or the ground features that we walk on.
- drugs (anxiolytics, antihypertensive agents etc)
- vision problems
etc
So if you do take drugs (and I suppose you do), you should check for orthostatic hypotension (that is a significantly decreased blood pressure when standing from the lying position accompanied by symptoms of faintness).
Another consideration would be to decrease dosage of drugs that are not absolutely needed, in close cooperation with your treating doctor.
Dizziness should be described in detail to help a doctor better understand its real cause. It's not the easiest symptom to investigate because 100 patients may describe 100 different clinical pictures! So the more detailed the description, the easier would be the "decoding" process. After establishing a diagnosis for your specific case then more detailed guidance can be given.
If you'd like more information, please describe your medical history and the symptoms themselves in the greatest detail possible and I'll be glad to help!
Kind Regards!
Needs investigation
Detailed Answer:
Hello,
Gait instability and falls are major problems particularly in advanced age. If your heart rate and blood pressure are acceptable during the dizziness attacks then a pacemaker problem can be excluded.
Other potential causes include:
- vertigo (the ears can be causing it sometimes)
- neurological problems (peripheral neuropathy for example), which reduces the sensation of the body position or the ground features that we walk on.
- drugs (anxiolytics, antihypertensive agents etc)
- vision problems
etc
So if you do take drugs (and I suppose you do), you should check for orthostatic hypotension (that is a significantly decreased blood pressure when standing from the lying position accompanied by symptoms of faintness).
Another consideration would be to decrease dosage of drugs that are not absolutely needed, in close cooperation with your treating doctor.
Dizziness should be described in detail to help a doctor better understand its real cause. It's not the easiest symptom to investigate because 100 patients may describe 100 different clinical pictures! So the more detailed the description, the easier would be the "decoding" process. After establishing a diagnosis for your specific case then more detailed guidance can be given.
If you'd like more information, please describe your medical history and the symptoms themselves in the greatest detail possible and I'll be glad to help!
Kind Regards!
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Above answer was peer-reviewed by :
Dr. Vaishalee Punj
Answered by
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