CALGARY- At the age of 87, Victor Bohonos’ heart sounds strong and healthy but several months ago he awoke to a strange feeling of pressure in his chest.
“I woke up one evening in May with a pressure from shoulder to shoulder,” Bohonos recalls. “It was a strange feeling, it wasn’t pain.”
Doctors diagnosed Bohonos with two blocked arteries and an arrhythmia. For the latter, Bohonos was told he would need a pacemaker.
“Pacemakers help keep the heart from going to slow,” explains Dr. Derek Exner, a heart rhythm specialist and researcher with the University of Calgary’s Libin Cardiovascular Institute. “When people’s hearts go too slow they often can get dizzy and weak. Pacemakers are designed to keep people from blacking out, to give them more energy and to improve their quality of life.”
Pacemakers typically used today are visible under the skin near the collarbone and attached to electrodes that connect to the heart, but because Bohonos was asked to take part in a clinical trial, his pacemaker is much smaller.
Measuring less than three centimeters in length and shaped like the tip of a pen, the miniature pacemaker is about one-sixth the size of traditional models. It’s also self-contained and is implanted directly into the base of the heart.
“We go up through the vein in the leg and then the pacemaker is deployed into the bottom chamber of the heart,” explains Dr. Exner.
The procedure takes less than an hour and patients are usually able to recover within a week. There is also a lower risk of infection and patients can continue with their regular activities. The new device also lasts 10 years, several years longer than traditional pacemakers but it costs more as well.
“The new technology is more expensive, about three to four times as much so we have to be able to figure out how we can bring in new technology to improve people’s quality of life and still afford to be able to run a health care system,” says Exner.
Calgary is one of 55 sites worldwide now testing the new pacemaker. Researchers hope to enroll 1000 patients internationally within the next 12 months. The entire study is expected to be completed within two to three years.
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