Talk:Pacemaker
I'm trying to create a timeline for the history of artificial pacemakers:
1954 - First cardiac pacemaker stimulates a human heart - Used skin electrodes, caused skin burns.
1955 - Dr. Paul Zoll, MD, developed a pulse generator that stimulates the heart. Manufactured as the PM-65 by Electrodyne, it was intended for use as emergency support during cardiac surgery.
1957 - After a power outage caused a PM-65 to stop functioning, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei asked Earl Bakken to create a device that worked on batteries. This prototype lead to the 5800 line of pacemakers by Medtronic, the first wearable external pacemaker. This device was also the first with implantable internal electrodes.
1958/Oct/8 - Under the direction of Dr. Åke Senning, Rune Elmqvist developed the first implantable pacemaker. The first implantation was performed on a Swedish man named Arne Larsson. He was 43 y/o at the time, and suffered from life-threatening Stokes-Adams seizures. (The device worked fine, and Mr. Larsson lived a long and full life until his death on December 28, 2001. Over his lifetime, Mr. Larsson received a total of 26 pacemakers over 43 years.) The power supply for this first pacemaker was two NiCad battery cells. The battery cells and the silicon transistors were encased in an epoxy resin. The entire pacemaker device (excluing leads) measured 55mm diameter by 16mm thickness.
1959/May/19 - First long term transvenous pacing wire used. A 67 year old male with high degree heart block underwent insertion of a transvenous lead via cephalic vein cut down. The transvenous wire was attached to an externalized pacing system via the skin incision. The pacing system was able to sense native ventricular activity, but was not able to inhibit pacing output based on sensed activity. The gentleman was discharged from the hospital on June 23, 1959. Because the pacing lead exited through the skin, the skin site required frequently infected. However he never developed a systemic infection due to the pacing system. After using the device for 41 months, he underwent implantation of a completely internal pacemaker system on November 8, 1962. He died 20 days later due to complications from the surgery.
1959 - Dr. William Chardack and Dr. Andrew Gage at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y., working with William Greatbatch (an electrical engineer), developed the first fully implantable pacemaker using primary cells as a power source.
1960/Feb/3 - Orestes Fiandra MD and Roberto Rubio MD implanted the first pacemaker in the Western Hemisphere in a 40 year old woman with complete heart block and syncopal episodes. The device worked for 9 months, when the patient died.
1960/Jun/6 - Chardack, Gage and Greatbatch implanted a self-contained, completely internal pacemaker powered by a non-rechargeable mercury zinc oxide batteries, in Buffalo, USA. The patient died 2 years later of unrelated causes.
1960 - Medtronic creates first long-term implantable pacemaker system
1974 - Plutonium battery devices in use.
References:
http://www.naspe.org/ep-history/timeline/
http://www.medtronic.com/corporate/history.html
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/bae/courses/bae465/1995_projects/scho/htmls/history1.html
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcardiac.htm
Isn't "artificial pacemaker" redundant? Shouldn't this article be at Heart pacemaker or something like that? RickK | Talk 02:50, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- The first sentence covers that. The heart contains natural pacemaker cells, described at Cardiac pacemaker. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:28, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)