Tiny pacemaker ups the ante on device’s abilities Premium

Northwestern University engineers tiny pacemaker for heart patients, eliminating need for invasive procedures and external power sources.

Scientists at Northwestern University in the US have engineered a pacemaker smaller than a grain of rice. The makers of the device say it can be implanted in a non-invasive procedure and that it doesn’t need an external power source to operate.

The device opens the possibility of replacing other, more cumbersome medical procedures, especially for infants born with congenital heart disease and people recovering from cardiac surgery.

The team published its paper in Nature on April 2.

People who have just undergone heart surgery need temporary pacemakers — as do infants born with congenital heart disorders. Both groups are prone to declining cardiac health and slow heart rates for some time.

The biggest highlight of the new device is its small size — so small that its developers have said it can simply be injected into the heart. While scientists at Oklahoma University had previously built a small pacemaker, the new one from Northwestern University is reportedly smaller by 2.5-times.

A traditional temporary pacemaker requires invasive open heart or endovascular surgical methods to both implant and remove.

In the four to seven days when the pacemaker is required, electrodes in larger devices also have to be integrated with the tissue, rendering their removal a non-trivial procedure for the patient. In fact, this procedure has been known to increase the risk of infections, internal bleeding or sometimes even death.