Every fifth pacemaker unnecessary

Twenty percent of cardiac pacemakers have been used unnecessarily by patients and may endanger their health

01/05/2011

US researchers have found that about 20 percent of pacemakers used were useless and harmful to patients rather than helpful. Like the physicians in the current issue of the journal „Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA“, assumes a not insignificant risk of death for those affected by unnecessarily implanted defibrillators.

Increased risk of death due to useless pacemakers
As part of their study, the research group led by cardiologist Sana M. Al-Khatib from the University of Durham, North Carolina had studied more than 100,000 pacemaker patients. The US researchers came to the conclusion that about one-fifth of the so-called „implantable cardioverter defibrillators“ did not benefit the treated patients and rather worsened the health status of the cardiac patients. For anyone who receives such a device unnecessarily is exposed to a high risk of death, said Sana M. Al-Khatib and colleagues in their current report „JAMA“-Article.

25,000 patients unnecessarily receive a pacemaker
According to US researchers, cardiac pacemakers can prolong life in patients with advanced cardiac insufficiency, but heartbeat, bypass surgery or heart failure would mean that the defibrillators would have no demonstrable benefit „implantable cardioverter defibrillators“ find his expression. Their study has now shown that the pacemakers in about 25,000 of nearly 112,000 cases were incorrectly implanted, because the present diagnosis was not heart failure, but heart attack or heart failure. Although that is with the use of the „implantable cardioverter defibrillators“ The associated health risks are always the same, but the unnecessary implants do not present a corresponding benefit to patients. Moreover, as the procedure could have been avoided altogether, the approximately 25,000 affected persons were exposed to the risk of possible complications and the associated increased risk of death without cause, the study group from the University of Durham concluded. (Fp)