This kind of control and capability makes me wonder if they won't someday become common in a preventative/health monitoring role instead of only for cardiac defects. The risk during installation and problems with MRI seem pretty serious, so I doubt it could happen soon, but it's not impossible.
I wonder what some sort of self-assembing/modular device that can be fed in chunks through a vein catheter or keyhole surgery, and built in-situ could be plausible.
Not sure what to do about the MRI issue though. They're only going to get more common as we figure out superconductors, and they have none of the radiation downsides of CT. Maybe non-metallic construction, or perhaps when milli-Tesla MRI becomes a reasonable alternative?
Is the battery in yours single use, or recharged via induction loop?
Pacemaker installation is now an arthroscopic outpatient process. (Mine was in conjunction with open-heart valve replacement - not so much an outpatient process, but they're starting to do 'em that way too now.)
Battery is single-use. I wouldn't want a rechargeable, because that would require far more frequent charging - to wit, much more room for error. Missing a charge would mean a dead...me. I'll take the ~5-8 year hard-way replacement.
What surprised me was that the total expected exposure was much higher for the patients spouse that the patient themselves. It's got twice the thickness of partner in which to be absorbed, but there's only close exposure for maybe 8-10 hours a day, and the inverse square to deal with.
Maybe some were. I'm basing it off a comment from a professor regarding nuclear power in small electronics. Quote (from memory, thus unreliable) below:
"So, they tested these things for all the possible stresses they would encounter -- high G maneuver and impact if they were in a car wreck, crushing force, electrical damage (from a lightening strike, etc), anything that they were likely to encounter whilst inside a human body. However, they were never thermally tested -- after all, why would the human body ever experience >1000 degrees F?
Ends up the answer is cremation. So, for a while, a major hazard around funeral homes was radioactive crematoriums."
"The whole body exposure is estimated to be approximately 0.1 rem per year to the patient and approximately 7.5 mrem per year to the patient's spouse."
In the same units, 100mrem (patient) to 7.5mrem (spouse).
Using the xkcd[1] radiation chart, that's the equivalent of a head CT scan every two years for the patient, and 2 plane flights a year for the partner.
This kind of control and capability makes me wonder if they won't someday become common in a preventative/health monitoring role instead of only for cardiac defects. The risk during installation and problems with MRI seem pretty serious, so I doubt it could happen soon, but it's not impossible.
I wonder what some sort of self-assembing/modular device that can be fed in chunks through a vein catheter or keyhole surgery, and built in-situ could be plausible.
Not sure what to do about the MRI issue though. They're only going to get more common as we figure out superconductors, and they have none of the radiation downsides of CT. Maybe non-metallic construction, or perhaps when milli-Tesla MRI becomes a reasonable alternative?
Is the battery in yours single use, or recharged via induction loop?