Explains everything you need to know about living with a pacemaker, ICD, or CRT device. By an experienced cardiologist, a cardiac device specialist, and a patient.

Today hundreds of thousands of Americans carry pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) within their bodies. These battery-powered machines—small computers, in fact—deliver electricity to the heart to correct dangerous disorders of the heartbeat. But few doctors, patients, or scholars know the history of these devices or how "heart-rhythm management" evolved into a multi-billion-dollar manufacturing and service industry. Machines in Our Hearts tells the story of these two implantable medical devices. Kirk Jeffrey, a historian of science and technology, traces the development of knowledge about the human heartbeat and follows surgeons, cardiologists, and engineers as they invent and test a variety of electronic devices. Numerous small manufacturing firms jumped into pacemaker production but eventually fell by the wayside, leaving only three American companies in the business today. Jeffrey profiles pioneering heart surgeons, inventors from the realms of engineering and medical research, and business leaders who built heart-rhythm management into an industry with thousands of employees and annual revenues in the hundreds of millions. As Jeffrey shows, the pacemaker (first implanted in 1958) and the ICD (1980) embody a paradox of high-tech health care: these technologies are effective and reliable but add billions to the nation's medical bill because of the huge growth in the number of patients who depend on implanted devices to manage their heartbeats.

Over the years we have heard many complaints that there is no verysimple book on cardiac pacing for real beginners. We have alsoheard that all the books on cardiac pacing are too complicated andimpossible to understand by beginners. Many have voiced the hopethat one day someone would write a book in the same style asDubin’s book on basic electrocardiography which is a hugebestseller with well over a million sold in many languages. A‘Dummy’ book on cardiac pacing would appeal to nurses,cardiology technicians, medical students and pacemaker companiesfor training their staff. We started with the assumption that the reader would know theprinciples of electrocardiography as in Dubin’s book butnothing about cardiac pacing. We carefully studied the Dubin bookand believe that we have improved his teaching method. The bookconsists of numbered illustrations each illustrating a concept inthe form of a diagram drawn professionally. We have been careful tomake the artwork simple for easy comprehension. Each illustration will occupy a page and have several lines oftext below it. We have already completed most of these. It isessential that there are all in color, this is a unique sellingpoint. The 3 authors have had vast experience in the field. Dr Baroldhas published 10 books on cardiac pacing and wrote the section oncardiac pacing in the 4th and 5th Edition of Braunwald’sbook, Heat Disease." S. Serge Barold, Roland Stroobandt and Alfons Sinnaeve Content: The plates depicting a concept with occupy 1 pages. Each plateconsists of a diagram and a short text. All diagrams are in color. In black and white they would losetheir teaching value There will be approx 200 plates. There will be approx 100 electrocardiograms. There will be a glossary, appendices and index

Consisting of 13 chapters, this book is uniformly written to provide sensible, matter-of-fact methods for understanding and caring for patients with permanent pacemakers, ICDs and CRT systems. Now improved and updated, including a new chapter on programming and optimization of CRT devices, this second edition presents a large amount of information in an easily digestible form. Cardiac Pacing and Defibrillation offers sensible, matter-of-fact methods for understanding and caring for patients, making everyday clinical encounters easier and more productive. Readers will appreciate the knowledge and experience shared by the authors of this book.

One of the most time-consuming tasks in clinical medicine is seeking the opinions of specialist colleagues. There is a pressure not only to make referrals appropriate but also to summarize the case in the language of the specialist. This book explains basic physiologic and pathophysiologic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease in a straightforward manner, gives guidelines as to when referral is appropriate, and, uniquely, explains what the specialist is likely to do. It is ideal for any hospital doctor, generalist, or even senior medical student who may need a cardiology opinion, or for that ma.