There has been great controversy related to performance of magnetic resonance imaging in patients with pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators. Recent questions have been raised regarding whether contraindications are absolute or relative. Although there are theoretical as well as documented issues relating to device malfunction, data suggest that scanning patients with devices may be...

Recent improvements to the functionality and stability of implantable pacemakers and cardioverter-defibrillators involve changes that include efficient battery power consumption and radiation hardened electrical circuits. Manufacturers have also pursued MRI-compatibility for these devices. While such newer models of pacemakers and cardioverter-defibrillators are similar in construction to previ...

BACKGROUND Whether outcomes differ between sexes following treatment with pacemakers (PM), implantable cardioverter defibrillators, and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices is unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS Consecutive US patients with newly implanted PM, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, and CRT devices from a large remote monitoring database between 2008 and 2011 were includ...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is common in patients who have implantable defibrillators and presents some unique challenges and opportunities. AF burden can be assessed more accurately, allowing for evaluation of therapy efficacy (drugs or ablation). It remains to be shown whether home monitoring of defibrillators to detect and treat AF more quickly can reduce cardiovascular and stroke end points. O...

udden cardiac death is a common problem, and increasing numbers of patients are surviving a first episode of a life threatening ventricular arrhythmia. In the absence of an acute myocardial infarction, patients who survive either ventricular fibrilla-tion or sustained ventricular tachycardia have a high risk of further episodes, which may be fatal. 1 Until recently, class I and class III antiar...

In recently years, Artificial Neural Networks have been studied extensively and applied in medical field, and have been demonstrated to have much better pattern recognition ability. In this chapter we present a VLSI chip to be implemented using 0.35 μm CMOS technology which is the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICDs). Implantable cardioverter defibrillator is a device which monitors th...