Do Leadless Pacemakers Really Have Fewer Complications in Patients?

A Cleveland Clinic-led study shows that leadless pacemakers have fewer mid-term and short-term complications than traditional transvenous pacemakers. The study was recently published in Heart Rhythm. “The issue with traditional pacemakers, which have been around in mainstream use since the 1960s, is that the greatest source of complications come from the incisional access that we need to create a pocket for the pacemaker,” Daniel Cantillon, M.D., research director for Cardiac Electrophysiology and Pacing at Cleveland Clinic and lead author of the study, told MD+DI. “If you look at the experience with traditional pacemaker complications from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s there really haven’t been any major improvements in those complication rates because we’re limited by the fact that we’re using incisional access and we’re still using wires…” Cantillon pointed out that the leads could break, dislodge or the pocket incisions could gain infections themselves. However, a leadless pacemaker is delivered into the heart from a catheter that is introduced from a blood vessel in the leg. It doesn’t require an incision and there are no wires used. Cleveland Clinic’s multi-center study compared short- and mid-term complications between 718 patients receiving the Nanostim leadless pacemaker and 1,436 patients with conventional (transvenous) pacemakers. “One of the limitations of the study was that it wasn’t a prospective head-to head comparison of patients getting le...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Cardiovascular Implants Source Type: news