Tiny device a window into heart disease
MONTREAL — Louise Leduc recalled tripping on the stairs, hitting her knee and experiencing excruciating pain. Then there was nothing. She had blacked out. It was one of many fainting spells that sent the St-Bruno, Que., resident in fright to a hospital emergency room for inconclusive tests related to blood pressure and heart function.
Leduc, 66, became the first patient in Quebec, and one of the first in Canada, to get the world’s smallest heart monitor on Tuesday. Lying under sterile blue gowns on the fourth floor of the Montreal Heart Institute, Leduc had the little heart device — barely bigger than a matchstick — injected under the skin above her left breast. The whole procedure took about three minutes.
“It’s really anti-climactic,” cardiologist Peter Guerra, chief of cardiac electrophysiology at the institute, said after removing his gloves. “In fact, it took us longer to set up.”
But now Guerra expects to pinpoint Leduc’s exact problem.
The small wireless monitor will track Leduc’s heart virtually and send the information to the institute’s technologists via cellular transmission.
Loss of consciousness is only one marker of disease and the challenge is to find out what is happening, Guerra said. Is the heart rate too fast, too slow, or does it take a long pause that stops the blood from flowing to the brain?
The advantage of the new Medtronic Reveal LINQ insertable cardiac monitor over its predecessor is that the previous version was 80 per cent larger and had to be surgically implanted in a hospital operating room.
Also, rather than keep such patients under observation for 48 hours in the emergency department or longer if admitted to the hospital, the device can be inserted in outpatient clinics. Patients are then tracked from afar for cardiac problems that are potentially life threatening — such as irregular heart rhythms that can lead to stroke.
The implant costs $5,000 and, as a one-time device, will be discarded after use.