Medical Breakthroughs: New and improved wireless pacemakers
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Doctors say a healthy heart beats 60 to 100 beats per minute.
When that rate slows down, patients need a pacemaker. They're usually bulky and need two wires connected to a battery, but now a wire free pacemaker is changing the game.
This new pacemaker system is much more comfortable for patients who must carry the device for the rest of their lives.
"From the moment that we're born, [the heart is] designed to automatically send out 60 to 80 electrical signals a minute," Medstar Washington Hospital Center Associate Director of Cardiac Arrhythmia Research Dr. Cyrus Hadadi said.
But the heart often loses the ability to regulate itself.
"So, instead of 60 or 80 beats a minute, it sends out 35 or 40," Hadadi said.
So, for years, pacemakers have been implanted in a patient's chest and leads, or wires, were threaded through the patient's body.
"Historically, what has been available to us, is a traditional device that involves a fairly bulky metal unit that contains the battery and circuitry required to run the pacemaker and two wires," Medstar Washington Hospital Center Executive Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology Dr. Zayd Eldadah said.
Medstar Washington Hospital Center is among the first in the nation to implant what's called the Aveir Dual-Chamber Leadless pacemaker. This tiny device is inserted through a vein and implanted in the heart. No surgery, no wires.
"With these new pacemakers, nobody will even know you have one," Hadadi said.
Patient Jonathan Rose was recently offered both types of pacemakers and made a quick decision.
"It sounds like a no-brainer to me. If you can have all these, not have a pouch in your chest, not have to spend six weeks trying to figure out whether you can have a golf swing again or whatever," Rose said.
"I want to see a day when everybody who needs a pacemaker, gets a leadless pacemaker, and we don't have to worry about problems with decade's old leads running through your veins and into your heart," Hadadi said.
The Aveir DR Leadless pacemaker system was part of a clinical trial at Medstar and received regulatory approval in June 2023.
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