The best part? When he haggles about the device's settings:
Lazar returned to New York and met with his doctors and a rep from the ICD manufacturer. One doctor confronted him directly. “She said, ‘You really should not be doing what you’re doing,’” Lazar says. “And I said, ‘This is what I do.’” He then literally haggled with them over a new ICD trigger. “The doctor’s like, ‘Okay, let’s make it 195 for two and a half minutes,’” remembers Lazar. “And I was like, ‘Couldn’t you make it 200 for five minutes?’ It was like buying a mattress from Russians.”Heh. Rock on!
-Wes
We've advised several patients that career changes would be needed after their ICD. One of them was a welder and two of them were commercial A/C guys. Proximity to big powerful magnetos - like in your rockstars amps - is dangerous.
ReplyDeleteIs it that his stage act gets his heart rate over 200, for a minute or two, on a regular basis? Or is it some interference from the equipment? Or is it some combination or something else?
ReplyDeleteRogue Medic -
ReplyDeleteI suspect it's because his normal heart rate approaches that rate during his performances.
There is a trade off when doctors set defibrillator detection at too high a rate: they might miss a clinically important rhythm. Alternatively, if they set a detection rate too low, the patient is more likely to be shocked for normal rapid rhythms.