Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators retrieved from deceased patients can be re-used in poorer countries where patients cannot afford new medical devices, a study suggests.
American researchers tested 27 pacemakers and implantable defibrillators removed post-mortem and found 30% had four or more years of battery life remaining, making them suitable for re-use.
While symptomatic bradycardia can easily be treated with a pacemaker, that option was not readily available to patients in low- and middle-income countries because of cost, the authors wrote this month in the American Journal of Cardiology.
“Pacemaker re-use may help alleviate this burden,” they said.
A 2007 survey carried out by the same research group found many patients would like to see their devices re-used after they died.
Pacemakers retrieved from patients following device upgrades had already been successfully re-used in some countries, the researchers said.
“During the early 1990s, nearly 10% of implantations performed in Sweden were with re-used devices. This practice was shown to be safe and to cost 10% [of] the cost of new device implantation.”
A separate study on safety, analysing outcomes from 2200 re-used devices, found just a 2% rate of infection and a 1% rate of device malfunction.
A quarter of all pacemaker implantations are device upgrades, providing another possible source of second-hand devices for low- and middle-income countries, the authors said.
“Many of these procedures were performed for battery depletion, and these devices would not be useful for reimplantation. However, a significant portion of these procedures were for upgrades ... after which the explanted device could be considered for re-use.”
American Journal of Cardiology 2012; online.
Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators retrieved from deceased patients can be re-used in poorer countries where patients cannot afford new medical devices, a study suggests.
American researchers tested 27 pacemakers and implantable defibrillators removed post-mortem and found 30% had four or more years of battery life remaining, making them suitable for re-use.
While symptomatic bradycardia can easily be treated with a pacemaker, that option was not readily available to patients in low- and middle-income countries because of cost, the authors wrote this month in the American Journal of Cardiology.
“Pacemaker re-use may help alleviate this burden,” they said.
A 2007 survey carried out by the same research group found many patients would like to see their devices re-used after they died.
Pacemakers retrieved from...