Good day everyone. I am a lady and I am 59 years old. I had three heart attacks and since I had my first heart attack I have pacemaker. Yesterday, I went to see my doctor, to check me on the regular basis. He told me that I need to do colonoscopy and he scheduled it for next week. While I was waiting in the waiting room, I have heard that he is talking to some other doctor that he is going to turn off my pacemaker??? Why? Why he would do this? Is this even necessary? What is going to happen to me?
Hey Anabell. Frankly, whenever I heard that someone needs to do a colonoscopy and that doctors want to turn off their pacemaker I don’t know what to tell. Especially because I have heard from some many different people that there is no need for doctors to do this. I don’t have any experience with it and I don’t know what people who had colonoscopy think about this. But I really believe that this is not possible and that you can do a colonoscopy without shutting down your pacemaker.
Seek for another opinion, that is all that I can tell you in this moment.
Hey there. Well, I am almost 100 % sure that there is no need for this. My grandmother did colonoscopy three months ago and doctors told her that they will turn off her pacemaker to do this surgery. She was thinking that this is normal but she mentioned this regularly to one of her neighbors. She was surprised so she told her to seek for another opinion. And she did.
Other doctor told her that there is no reason to do this, it is totally safe to do colonoscopy with pacemaker on.
So my suggestion as well is to see another doctor and ask him for opinion.
Hey. I really don’t know why doctors would need to turn off the pacemaker to do a colonoscopy. I really don’t get that. Maybe I don’t know anything about colonoscopy but I would be really scared if they wanted to do this to me. I was reading that the magnet shifts to totally different mode where changes in its operation can be made. Well, after the colonoscopy is done they return pacemaker settings in the starting position, just like it was before. If you haven’t check the magnet you can feel something like irregular heartbeat for a couple of seconds. It can be uncomfortable. I remember that doctors turned off pacemaker of my friend during colonoscopy and everything was ok.
Hey there. Yes, of course that there is a possibility that they will turn off your pacemaker during the colonoscopy but I was very curious why and I asked my doctor about this. According to him, there is no some especial thing why doctors are doing this. They believe that it is much safer than leave it on, but since people are really scared of it they usually consult with their doctor and they make a deal what is the best for them.
So I always support the idea that you visit another doctor and seek for another opinion. You can’t be wrong with this idea.
Good luck.