SafePace
Lead Placement Tester Helps Ensure a
Long Life for
Cardiac Implants
Placing
Cardiac implant leads into the heart can be a hit-or-miss process, requiring surgeons to manually tug at the
Lead to see how well it’s holding onto
Cardiac tissue. If the contact is **t strong e**ugh, a repeat of the procedure is necessary. Yet, because the testing relies on the doc’s subjective assessment of the grip, there’s a lot of room that’s left for errors. Biomedical engineering graduate students at University of Purdue developed a new tool to standardize this testing in order to improve
Lead Placement and take the guess work out of the procedure.
The
SafePace device consists of two pegs that are initially bound by a magnet. One of the pegs has a connector that is attached to the proximal end of a lead, the distal end of which has been secured to the heart. When ready, a clinician pulls on the larger peg that’s **t connected to the
Lead in order to separate the two components. If they come apart, that means the grip of the
Lead holding onto the heart is stronger than the magnet’s force holding the two pegs together. If the magnet holds on, the
Lead Placement is too weak and should be performed over again to improve its hold.
Here’s a Purdue University video with the developers talking about and demonstrating the tech**logy:
Link:
Medical device by Purdue engineers could standardize pacemaker lead stability tests…
