When might I need a pacemaker?

You might need a pacemaker for one of two reasons. The first reason is you do not have the right number of heartbeats, the heart goes too slowly. That could be all of the time the heart is going too slowly or some of the time even at rest and we need to give you a pacemaker to make sure that you've got the right number of heartbeats so that you feel better, your risk of passing out is much lower and we can improve the heart pump function potentially as well. Some patients, sometimes could be you, might be that you do not have the right number of heartbeats when you're trying to do something, you're trying to walk up a hill or do some sort of activity and you don't feel well as a result of that. You may feel tired, lethargic, breathless and sometimes we can use a pacemaker in that scenario to make you feel better as well, to have a bit more energy and be a little bit more active. We also sometimes put in pacemakers for patients where the heart beats in an uncoordinated fashion. One chamber of the heart. if you like, beats out of sync with the other chamber so the heart isn't beating nice and efficiently but it sort of wobbles if you like and we can use pacing leads to make the heart beat in that more synchronous way to give a more meaningful contraction to improve the heart pump function to deliver the blood more efficiently where it needs to go again to make people feel better and hopefully to make you feel better if you need it as well.