SOUTH AFRICA-PACEMAKER INNOVATION South African hospital leads the continent to implant world's smallest pacemaker

Record ID: 151229

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA-PACEMAKER INNOVATION South African hospital leads the continent to implant world's smallest pacemaker
  • Date: 12th June 2015
  • Summary: MONITOR
  • Embargoed: 27th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: South Africa
  • Country: South Africa
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVABI0YG20N9XF459BAUPQWLQ6IX
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Forty-eight years after Groote Schuur Hospital was placed on the world stage when the late Professor Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first heart transplant, the medical facility continues to make strides in modern medicine.
    It recently became the first hospital in Africa to implant the world's smallest pacemaker known as the Medtronic Pacing System.
    Cape Town resident, Cecil George Adams who received the device two months ago after suffering a heart attack at the hospital is back today for a routine check-up.
    "I was off from work, the firm closed and I stayed at home and went to Delft (township) and I came back home and my wife dished up and I had a pain while I was sitting there and I went to give my dog food and felt the pain getting big and so I phoned the ambulance and the ambulance came and said I had a heart attack," he said.
    Adams says his health has improved and he is now able to do more physical activities than he was able to before.
    "This pacemaker helps me a lot because I can do anything, I can walk fast, before I walked and had to rest, even when I came to the hospital up the hill here, I must rest twice before I get on top," he said.
    Consulting cardiologist and electro-physiologist, Doctor Ashley Chin who performed the procedure says that they have carried out three operations so far, to implant the Medtronic Pacing System, as part of a worldwide clinical trial to prove its safety. Once this is achieved the device will be available commercially.
    "Basically it involves implanting a leadless (no wires) pacemaker into the heart and it's called the Micra Transcatheter Pacing System and basically the procedure involves planting a leadless pacemaker, what we do is we give local anaesthetic over the right groin area, through the groin area we insert a sheath and through the sheath there is a delivery system that deploys the leadless pacemaker into the heart and the device is positioned into the right ventricular apex and can be re-positioned a few times to make sure it's in a good position, once its positioned the device is left there and the delivery system is removed."
    Pacemakers help the heart beat more regularly. This new miniaturised technology is designed to provide patients with the advanced pacing technology of traditional pacemakers via a minimally invasive approach.
    It is attached to the heart wall and delivers electrical impulses that pace the heart through an electrode at the end of the device.
    The technology was previously implanted in a patient in Austria in a pivotal clinical trial in 2013.
    It is one-tenth the size of a conventional pacemaker and comparable in size to a large vitamin. The device does not require the use of wires or leads to connect to the heart thereby minimizing complications that normally arise with the old system.
    In contrast with current pacemaker implant procedures the implant does not require an incision and the creation of a 'pocket' under the skin. This eliminates a potential source of complications and any visible sign of the device.
    "Because older pacemakers require a surgical procedure where the device is implanted under the left collar bone, left or right collar bone and there is a lead that is implanted into the right ventricle, this particular pacemaker does not have a pacemaker and does not have a lead so it prevents all those potential complications that often arise from the pocket and from the lead," said Doctor Chin.
    Doctor Chin says that with trained doctors and special x-ray equipment, more African countries should be able to perform the procedure in sterile catheter laboratories which are already available on the continent.
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