A pacemaker is a small device that is placed into someone chest or abdomen. The primary pacemaker function is to ensure that an abnormal heart rhythm (which is also called arrhythmia) is reduced to the point where essentially normal heart beats allow a person to live a reasonably normal life in society. For people who need a pacemaker, not having one (or having the one that they do have malfunction in some way) could literally prove fatal to them. Since dying is a pretty terrible thing to have happen to you, a pacemaker (and making sure that the primary pacemaker function is being fulfilled properly) can be a very serious matter indeed.
A pacemaker works by way of monitoring when your heart beats, by being connected to a nerve that attaches to your heart and keeps it pumping. Obviously, without these nerves, the heart would never receive the power or the signal that it needs, in order to function properly. Death would be guaranteed, and it would not take very long to happen. So the pacemaker stands in the path of death – the main pacemaker function is to keep someone alive by keeping their heart beating. And if you need a pacemaker, you know how handy it can be for fulfilling just that need.
The pacemaker is just a little box that has a program in it for a particular rhythm. Some people have an arrhythmia which causes their hearts to function less effectively than they should be functioning, because their hearts simply do not beat in a properly timed, reasonable interval. The pacemaker function is to make sure that if there is no signal from elsewhere in the nervous system (which is supposed to keep the heart beating with the regularity of a metronome), the pacemaker supplies the heart with a tiny little jolt. This jolt induces the heart to beat one time. And if all else happens to fail, the pacemaker can do this jolting a great many times. People who need a pacemaker say it saves their lives, because it can replace a part of their central autonomic nervous system. If the heart needs the signal but does not receive it, the pacemaker function is to keep the person alive. And in those cases in which the arrhythmia causes the heart to race at a frantic clip, the pacemaker is able to cause the heart to only beat at a slower rhythm. Different pacemakers are programmed in different ways, but some fill the need to have a slowed down heart rate.
The pacemaker function is to keep a heart pumping at a nice, steady clip. There is every reason why some people need a pacemaker, as a lot of folks have an arrhythmia of some sort. It is nothing but a slight malfunction in their heart's electrical system, which can be corrected with relative simplicity. And since a pacemaker can save a life, it might be a worthwhile implant to consider having put in, assuming you have an arrhythmia.
