Gastric Pacemaker: Abdominal Twitching
For the past 6-8 weeks I’ve been experiencing strong abdominal “twitching” several times a day, right around the gastric neurostimulator. It’s clearly visible to others and looks almost like my stomach is hiccuping.
After contacting my gastroenterologist, my surgeon, and Enterra, I finally got an answer as to what’s going on. Apparently several patients have reported this kind of abdominal twitching and it’s been traced back to a problem with one of the leads (during surgery two leads, which are connected to the device, are inserted into the stomach muscle to deliver the electrical stimulation).
My doctor will try to fix it by adjusting the settings when I go for my 3-month appointment on December 15th, but if that doesn’t work I’ll need a second surgery to replace the lead. Not great news, but I’m wondering if this is why my results haven’t been as significant as I initially hoped. If the choice is between settling for a lower setting than I truly need or sub-par results and having surgery to replace the lead, I will gladly choose surgery.
I so believe in the value of this treatment and I want 100% of the possible benefit! I’ll keep you all posted…
If anyone else has experienced this, please let me know!
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4 Responses to “Gastric Pacemaker: Abdominal Twitching”
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Best of luck either way it goes! In a way it might be a relief to know that it’s faulty equipment rather than your body not responding to the treatment. Gives you another avenue to go down. If things aren’t working out, it’s always good to have a possible reason why and options available to try to remedy it.
I’d imagine that suffering from GP weakens the stomach muscle & it probably could take some time for it to regain strength. Though I am not sure what the standard time frame for someone with an Enterra would be. It can be impressive where you can be 3 months, 6 months, 1 year down the road, when dealing with illness. Sometimes the body takes time.
Oh no! I’m so sorry to hear that! Hopefully since you already have a ‘pocket’ formed you won’t have to deal with that miserable recovery again. I hope that that’s why you haven’t had a huge response yet. Hopefully healing from the lead replacement won’t push out your improvement either.
But I do agree with you – I’d take a second surgery over a lower than optimal setting. Gotta make this whole fiasco worthwhile!
[...] Notify me of follow-up comments via email. « Before Gastric Pacemaker: Abdominal Twitching December 11, 2009 [...]
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