Today, I was asked whether travel vaccines would interfere with a planned pacemaker implant. I had to check this out.
Vaccines stimulate the immune system to recognise foreign proteins that are part of the virus or bacteria you’re vaccinating against.
This shouldn’t affect the way the immune systems abilityto deal with a skin incision or any bacteria that might be introduced at the time.
However, sometimes people can have a fever in response to a vaccine as the immune system is mobilised. It’s not possible to differentiate this fever from that due to a vaccine versus a fever from a new infection.
As one of the major complications of pacemaker implantation is infection, the safest thing is to defer implantation until any fever has resolved.
Fevers are often an issue whilst patients are in hospital and are waiting for a pacemaker as an inpatient. Data shows a fever before pacemaker implant is associated with a much higher risk of device infection subsequently.
Most people however don’t mount a fever response to a vaccine, in which case it shouldn’t be a problem at all.