Possibly sill question regarding pacemakers

[bigbaldguy]

Ok so if a patient has an implanted Defibrillator/pacemaker and the patient for whatever reason experiences brain death will the pacemaker make the heart continue to beat until the muscle tissue uses all of its "fuel"? Basically could a "dead" patient with a pacemaker have a pulse even if just for a short time after death? Continuing on with the same train of thought would a ECG pick up the firing of a pacemaker and possibly interpret it as a heart beat? My mom recently had a dfib/pacemaker put in and these are all things that occurred to me but I can't find anything on the internet about it.

 

[ArcticKat]

Ok so if a patient has an implanted Defibrillator/pacemaker and the patient for whatever reason experiences brain death will the pacemaker make the heart continue to beat until the muscle tissue uses all of its "fuel"? Basically could a "dead" patient with a pacemaker have a pulse even if just for a short time after death? Continuing on with the same train of thought would a ECG pick up the firing of a pacemaker and possibly interpret it as a heart beat? My mom recently had a dfib/pacemaker put in and these are all things that occurred to me but I can't find anything on the internet about it.

Yup. Nope.

For a short time the heart will be capable of continuing to beat, it's no different than the SA node and a continuing heart rate after brain death. So long as the heart muscle is viable enough to contract, you'll have a pulse.

Pacemakers spikes don't have enough amplitude to be detected as a heart rate. In most cases a practitioner would even have a hard time to see a pacemaker spike.

 

[Akulahawk]

The AICD/Pacer will continue to try to do it's job until it runs out of power or is turned off. The cardiac tissue might be completely dead but the pacer will still try to get it to beat... I would hope that most or nearly all ECG units in service today would be able to sense a pacer spike for what it is and not report that as a heart rate.