[When the patient calls the SAMU because his pacemaker is making "beep-beep". Study on physicians' knowledge on pacemaker sound alarm].

INTRODUCTION: More than 60,000 pacemakers are inserted every year in France. This number has been steadily increasing for a decade. Miscellaneous incidents can lead patients with pacemakers or their relatives to contact emergency services. Following the call to the SAMU-Center 15 of a asymptomatic 90-year-old woman reported that her pacemaker was making "beep-beep", we assessed the knowledge of physicians of the SAMU-Center 15 (call center) dispatching center on the existence of pacemaker sound alarms.

METHODS: Forty-two physicians, emergency physicians and general practitioners, regularly participating in the medical dispatching of the SAMU-Center 15 in Seine-Seine-Denis were interviewed. We asked them how a patient with a pacemaker could be informed of a malfunction of it without being symptomatic.

RESULTS: No physician interviewed mentioned an audible alarm. All of them confirmed their ignorance of its existence. One physician had already been asked for a similar reason and had referred the patient to the emergency department without knowing it was an alarm.

CONCLUSION: Patients and physicians seem insufficiently aware of the existence of the existence of pacemakers' sound alarm. An effort must be made regarding the information on the existence of such an alarm and the way to managed it.