Patients with pacemakers and implantable defibrillators need to have their devices followed.  These devices are battery powered.  In addition, these complex machines need fine tuning individualized to the particular patients medical problem.  To address these issues we offer our patients a regular pacemaker and ICD clinic.  In this clinic, your device and lead system will be electronically evaluated and optimized for your particular problem.  Although we often times ask technicians from the various pacemaker/ICD companies to assist us in evaluating patients with implanted devices, the clinic itself is run by a physician and all device interrogations and alterations in device programming are directed by our doctors.

In general, we like to see patients with either permanent pacemakers or implantable defibrillators at least quarterly in our clinic to evaluate the device.  If the patient recently had the device implanted, we will ask the patient to come in a bit more often initially to insure it's working optimally. If the device is nearly the end of it's battery life or if the patient has experienced any sort of problem with their device, we may ask the patient to come in more frequently.

patients sometimes inquire about having their device followed from home using the telephone.  This type of pacemaker check is called a trans-telephonic check.  We do not perform trans-telephonic device interrogations in this practice.  A trans-telephonic pacer check will only tell the doctor if the pacemaker is working at it's minimal level and if the pacers battery is about to die.  No optimization of the pacers functions can be performed over the telephone and many other important parameters are left unchecked and un-optimized.  If you had a nice car you wouldn't want the mechanic to tell you the car's probably OK because it sounds like it's running well over the phone; Same thing with a pacemaker - except if a pacemaker's engine quits so might yours.