Complications from pacemaker insertion

Doctor, you want to talk about the complications from pacemaker insertion, I think. Yes, so I think broadly speaking we can divide them into the acute complications, i.e. the ones that happen straight after or during the procedure that we know about, or some of the rarer longer term complications. In terms of the acute complications, so the ones that can happen at the time of the procedure or soon after, One of the commonest problems is infection from where we cut the skin and that's about 1% to 2% chance of that happening, although we do give antibiotics to reduce the risk. Similarly, 1% to 2% chance of significant bleeding and bruising from the site where we cut the skin, the wound site. There's a 1% chance of lung damage because of the proximity of the lung to the vessel so that we put the leads into and that may require the patient to stay overnight for some either observation or to put a drain to relieve the air or blood collection around the lungs. There's about a three percent chance of lead displacement although this is in the first few weeks rather than immediately during the procedure and that may require a second procedure to try and reposition the lead if that were to move in the first few weeks after the pacemaker implant. The serious complications are rare, it's quite a safe procedure, but clearly there are very occasional, rare serious complications, and these are about 0.2%, so one in 500 chance of bleeding around the heart, a heart attack, a stroke, or requiring emergency surgery, and less than one in 1,000 chance of death from the procedure. It doesn't delay complications, these are rare, and they relate to problems with having a metal system within the body itself. Very, very rare, but sometimes you can get a late infection occurring several years after the implant has gone in. You can have problems with butt clots in the veins that feed the heart where the leaves are in. Again, I would say all of those, probably less than one in 1,000. Okay, thank you.