Wednesday, January 18, 2006
A short article from New Scientist, 14 January 2006:
There's a couple paragraphs more, but that's the gist of it. What I get from this is that it's ONLY a defibrillator, not a pacemaker; it wouldn't be used for anyone who needs a pacemaker as well as an ICD, and doesn't therefore apply to anyone who is getting bi-ventricular pacing out of their device.
Plus, I'd have to say I haven't heard of any noticeable number of people getting unnecessary shocks; I've met many people with the ICD/pacemaker devices, and most have *never* had their ICD shock them. Let alone unnecessarily. So I'm not convinces that this was as big a problem as the developer of the new device is making out. However, others' experience may vary. Certainly, for people who need only an ICD, smaller and easier would be better. I wonder, though, whether it eats up more battery power monitoring more of the heart? Would that mean more frequent, if less invasive, surgery?
Implantable defibrillators have saved countless lives by applying electric shicks to jump-start failing hearts. But these devices have one serious flaw: they often go off when they are not needed, giving unsuspecting and perfectly healthy recipients the fright of their lives. [BunRab's 2 cents worth: if they were perfectly healthy, they wouldn't have implanted defibrillators, would they now.] "People often don't realise just what unpleasant and flawed devices standard defibrillators are," says Andrew Grace... For this reason, he has been working with Cameron Health of an Clemente, CA, to develop a defibrillator that may spell an end to unnecessary shocks by more thoroughly assessing electrical activity in the heart.
Standard defibrillators are connected to the heart via wires, and judge how well the organ iz functioning by monitoring the small area of tissue that is usually the origin of rhythm disturbances. However, electrical anaomalies in this area are not always morrored elsewhere in the heart, and are therefore not always significant. But defibrillators still kick in and give the heart an unnecessary shock.
The new device scans the whole heart in the same way as an ECG, and will only provide a shock if it picks up a major, organ-wide irregularity. Like an ECG it uses sensor electrodes and magnets to pick up the electric fields generated by electrical activity in the heart muscle.
As well as avoiding false alarms, the device is less invaive than standard defibrillators as it is not attached to the heart itself but fits on the chest just under skin. This makes fitting it simpler and safer.
There's a couple paragraphs more, but that's the gist of it. What I get from this is that it's ONLY a defibrillator, not a pacemaker; it wouldn't be used for anyone who needs a pacemaker as well as an ICD, and doesn't therefore apply to anyone who is getting bi-ventricular pacing out of their device.
Plus, I'd have to say I haven't heard of any noticeable number of people getting unnecessary shocks; I've met many people with the ICD/pacemaker devices, and most have *never* had their ICD shock them. Let alone unnecessarily. So I'm not convinces that this was as big a problem as the developer of the new device is making out. However, others' experience may vary. Certainly, for people who need only an ICD, smaller and easier would be better. I wonder, though, whether it eats up more battery power monitoring more of the heart? Would that mean more frequent, if less invasive, surgery?
