More follow-up care needed for heart implant patients
June 5th, 2008 joshua
Patients who have an implanted heart defibrillator need more follow-up care, an international team of researchers has determined.
Associated Press reports guidelines are being established to deal with the nearly 2 million patients worldwide with some sort of implanted heart device, like a pacemaker or defibrillator.
Since their use has rapidly increased in recent years, the reports of malfunctioning devices is on the rise.
Defibrillator devices have either not sent a life-saving jolt to a patient’s heart, or delivered a shock when it wasn’t needed.
Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic say more patient after-care is needed to monitor devices and prevent malfunctions.
Included in these guidelines was the use of wireless technology by doctors to monitor hearts of patients.
We reported on this blog about a month ago about research which showed implanted devices and their wireless transmitters could be hacked and the performance of the device could be compromised. Also, hackers were able to obtain private data on patients with these devices.












