Empowered Patient Podcast

Vish Charan, Divisional Vice President of Product Development at Abbott's Cardiac Rhythm Management Business, explains some of the limitations of traditional pacemakers implanted in the chest with long wires connecting the pacemaker to the heart. Abbott has developed the AVEIR DR system, a dual-chamber leadless pacemaker that uses implant-to-implant technology to send electrical impulses between the upper and lower chambers of the heart.  The i2i technology allows these capsule-size devices to be implanted directly in the heart with the ability to communicate to synchronize the heart rhythm. Vish explains, "What we can do right now, is to get a very, very small access into the veins in the leg, and from the veins in the leg with a very small access, we're able to deploy these capsule-size pacemakers directly into the heart with a long tube. We call that a catheter. But that is how they're deployed. So, you don't have a surgical pocket. You don't have a big cut open in your chest, and the device is implanted