North Shore Medical Center to dislay
Linda Werbner
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“Ginormous” is the word cardiologist Dr. Lawrence Block used to describe the bulky, near-hockey puck sized pacemakers of the early 1960s that came with batteries. Compared to today’s tiny pill-size devices, his description says a lot about the speed of technology.
“Over the last three decades there have been tremendous improvements,” said Block. “They’ve gotten smaller and smaller and smarter and smarter.”
These life-saving devices stabilize heart rhythms by applying electrical impulses to the heart. Initially, the pacemaker had a single wire which went through a vein into the right ventricle,” he said. “By 1990, two-wire systems were developed enabling coordination of the upper and lower chambers and improving the heart’s pumping function. And today the batteries last up to 10 years or more.”