Tiny Pacemaker Can Be Installed Via Catheter

the_newsbeagle writes "About four million people around the world have pacemakers implanted in their bodies, and those devices all got there the same way: surgeons sliced open their patients' shoulders and inserted the pulse-generating devices in the flesh near the heart, then attached tiny wires to the heart muscle. ... A device that just received approval in the EU seems to solve those problems. This tiny pacemaker is the first that doesn't require wires to bring the electrical signal to the heart muscle, because it's implanted inside the heart itself, and is hooked onto the inner wall of one of the heart's chambers. This is possible because the cylindrical device can be inserted and attached using a steerable catheter that's snaked up through the femoral artery."

Comments

"Secretive" company

[Freshly Exhumed]

Patented to the hilt, I'm sure. I doubt there are any open source projects of this type, so once again humanity is gripped firmly by the invisible hand of the profit motive.