Leadless II undergoing safety standard testing.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Dr. Vivek Reddy, a surgeon and cardiologist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, has made history by conducting the first-ever non-surgical implantation of a pacemaker that has absolutely no lead in it.
The pacemaker, which is quite simply called Leadless II, is currently undergoing safety and standards testing before it can be endorsed for use by the general public. The process of having the pacemaker installed on a patient’s heart involves attaching the device to the end of a catheter, which is then inserted into the patient’s groin area and carried up the femoral artery until it reaches the heart – a far safer procedure than actually cutting into the patient and attaching it on an open heart.
By having such a miniature pacemaker, Reddy says that the device is by far the safest on the market. The size means that it cannot have leads, which are inserted into a patient’s chest, which makes the device easier to install and less invasive for the patients. Despite the size, however, the Leadless II pacemaker is still more than able to perform the functions of a standard pacemaker; it is able to monitor the heart rate of the patient in which it is installed, and when the heart rate slows, it provides a small electrical jolt to re-stimulate the heart into normal rhythm.
Reddy specializes in internal medicine and cardiology at Mount Sinai, where he is also a professor in the latter subject. His clinical focuses include a wide array of subjects: Atrial Fibrillation, Atrial Flutter, Cardiomyopathy, Renovascular Hypertension, Stroke, Tachycardia, Ventricular Fibrillation, and Ventricular Tachycardia. The use of catheters is a subject of his published research, and he has been featured in essays and scientific papers upwards of 10 times.
He earned his Medical Doctorate from the University of Michigan Medical School, then did his residency in internal medicine at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. He completed his fellowship in cardiovascular diseases at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and another fellowship in electrophysiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined Mount Sinai in 2009. Before that, he was the Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com