Cardiologist Tondo: “With wireless pacemaker, higher safety margin”

“Wireless pacemakers are inserted directly into the heart chambers without the need for a surgical wound, as happens when a conventional pacemaker is implanted”, for which “the risk of infection is between 1% and 5% of all implants”. The wireless pacemaker “is an important step forward in technology because it offers the patient a much higher safety margin”. This was stated by Claudio Tondo, director of the Department of Arrhythmology, Centro cardiologico Monzino Irccs Milano, participating in the event organized today in Milan by Abbott with various experts and during which the company announced the availability in Italy of Aveir* Dr, the first wireless dual-chamber pacemaker system in the world to treat people with an abnormal or slower-than-normal heart rhythm.

Cardiac arrhythmias are on the rise. Among these is “bradycardia” which is characterized by “having a heart rate below 60 beats per minute – explains the cardiologist – In the general population there are some subjects whose baseline frequency is below 60 beats per minute, because genetically they were born that way. This does not mean that they are patients to be considered heart patients – he warns – However, bradycardia can also be induced by drugs and therefore the patient may feel tired, poor concentration. So in these cases we are obviously talking about symptomatic bradycardia”. Then there are “young subjects who are athletes and sports, especially endurance sports such as running, walking, swimming, cycling, facilitate the reduction of heart rate. These subjects are bradycardic, but it is a physiological expression of our cardiovascular system”.

Of particular interest are “bradycardias in the more advanced decades – Tondo specifies – in elderly subjects where the increase in age leads to a progressive degeneration of the so-called ‘control unit’, where our impulse originates. In these subjects there is a progressive reduction in the heart rate which can lead, in certain cases, to a marked reduction” in the rhythm “and therefore determine symptoms up to even syncope or fainting, that is, the subject can lose consciousness precisely because the frequency is excessively low”. In the treatment of arrhythmias “wireless pacemakers do nothing more than exactly reproduce the function of the conventional pacemaker – concludes Tondo – There is no difference from the point of view of stimulation, but a whole series of advantages”.