The heart rate of a person is set by the frequency of the heartbeat , beats that are given thanks to the electrical impulses that cause the muscle to contract, in this way it is possible to pump blood throughout the body . But what happens if the mechanism fails us? The solution is the pacemaker , a small electronic device that allows detecting and correcting heart rhythm failures.
Although now it is a simple operation, just a couple of hours long, a few decades ago it revolutionized heart surgery, but they had nothing to do with the tiny devices of today . They were large, heavy and external, the patient had to carry it hanging and plugged into the current.
It took until 1958 to see the first internal pacemaker that, although it only lasted 3 hours in operation , was the beginning of pacemakers as we know them today. Little by little he improved his design, but the handicap remained the life of the batteries, until in 1971 Wilson Greatbatch devised the lithium iodide cell, and solved the problem.
At present, this inconvenience is more than overcome, and the life of pacemakers ranges between 5 and 10 years, depending on the degree of use of each patient. But not only has the battery problem been improved, the implantation technique of the device has also been greatly improved, which no longer has to be so invasive.
Now, instead of being placed under the clavicle, there is the possibility of implanting it without any surgery , using a catheter to introduce it through the femoral vein. Furthermore, as a latest development, they are now beginning to use lead-free pacemakers , the first implantation in the world without leads took place in Spain, at the Infanta Cristina Hospital in Badajoz in January 2014.
