Medical Devices & Technology Archive

If your heart rate slows, a device can stop you from dropping.

If you have ever fainted, you know it can be a frightening experience. There are many conditions that can cause fainting, but a nervous system reflex is often responsible. Certain triggers—for example, standing in a hot, crowded area—can cause blood pressure to fall, and with it, blood flow to the brain. The person may or may not feel faint or nauseated before blacking out.

Advanced device buys time until a transplant can be performed.

Like other people with advanced heart failure, Jim Carelli, Jr., suffered from severe shortness of breath and fatigue. With a heart unable to pump a sufficient amount of blood to his organs, his kidneys began to fail, and he swelled with fluid. He needed a heart transplant, or he would die.

Q. I am 90 years old and have had severe heart failure for seven years after having a heart attack. I have an implantable defibrillator. It has never gone off. It is near the end of its lifetime, and the cardiologist asked me if I want it replaced. What would you advise?

A. Many people with severely damaged hearts receive implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) because they have a high risk of sudden death from rhythm abnormalities. Fortunately, you have not had this problem, but you remain at considerable risk. If a dangerous arrhythmia occurs, the defibrillator might save your life.

Here are the options when the leads on your device stop working.

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) kills up to 350,000 people a year. It is caused by a malfunction in the heart's electrical system that can occur when the lower chambers of the heart suddenly start beating in an uncoordinated fashion, preventing the heart from pumping blood out to the lungs and body. Unless the heart is shocked back into normal rhythm, the person rarely survives.

In the near future, a miniature sensor attached to your torso by two adhesive electrode patches may wirelessly and securely transmit vital information about your heart and respiration to medical personnel while you are hospitalized on a general-care floor, or are being wheeled around the building.

The device, called Aingeal (Gaelic for "angel"), is being developed by Intelesens, a company in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with input from a team led by Dr. Nathaniel Sims of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. Dr. Sims challenged Intelesens to make an inexpensive wearable monitor that could provide basic safety surveillance to the 60% of patients in unmonitored hospital areas—that is, outside of intensive care and step-down units.

An ICD can be lifesaving, but it can have unique risks for women.

Our heart normally beats to a steady lub-dub, lub-dub rhythm. Yet in some of us, the heart beats faster or in a different pattern than usual. This is called an abnormal heart rhythm, or arrhythmia.

Metal-on-metal hip replacements don't increase cancer

Unless you have an MRI-friendly pacemaker, a CT scan may be safer.

If you have an implanted cardiac device such as a pacemaker or defibrillator, you have likely been told you cannot undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In multiple studies, the powerful magnets in MRI units have caused pacemakers to change their settings and the leads in both types of devices to become superheated. Some deaths have occurred during inadvertent, unmonitored scanning of patients with pacemakers, although the exact reasons are unknown.

Sophisticated devices add to traditional rehabilitation techniques.

Every year, thousands of people survive strokes (or "brain �attacks"), only to become locked in an arduous struggle to regain lost function. With the help of modern rehabilitation techniques, many are able to resume a normal or near-normal lifestyle.

Others are left with substantial deficits that impair their ability to live independently.

Within a year or two after treatment for deep-vein thrombosis (DVT)—that is, a blood clot in the leg—up to half of patients develop a serious complication called post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS). PTS is a chronic condition that involves pain, aching, swelling, itching, skin discoloration, and in severe cases, ulcers in the affected leg. The causes aren't entirely clear but probably include residual damage and inflammation from the original clot. Obesity, older age, and inadequate anticoagulation therapy may also increase the risk. There's no cure for PTS, so prevention is especially important.

Graduated compression stockings worn for two years after treatment for a first DVT have been shown to reduce the risk of PTS by as much as 50%. ("Graduated" means the stockings are tightest at the ankles and gradually looser toward the knee and thigh.) But the most reliable studies have tested only knee high stockings, so there's been some uncertainty about the best approach. Many clinicians, for example, believe that thigh-highs provide better protection than knee-highs, especially following a DVT above the knee. Now, a multicenter trial has shown that thigh-highs are no better for preventing PTS than knee-highs and more likely to be discontinued because they're less comfortable. Results were published online Dec. 16, 2011, in the journal Blood.