Battery-free, wireless pacemaker can reduce sudden cardiac deaths

USA: A miniaturized (weighing 110 mg), battery-free, wireless pacemaker that supports optical and electrical multisite stimulation has been developed and tested for the first time in vivo by the US researchers. The related study is published in the journal Nature Communications. The device omits the weight and bulk associated with battery power along with the need to replace or recharge, allowing for indefinite operation.

This development provides major relief from the current technology in which the battery makes up the majority of the size and weight of a pacemaker resulting in a largely visible device that sits on the upper chest causing significant dissatisfaction for patients.

Sudden cardiac death is the largest cause of natural death in the United States with over 300,000 adult deaths each year. Researchers hope this new device will help decrease the number of these deaths.

Pacemakers, originally developed as clinical treatments for abnormal heart rhythms, have also been harnessed to reveal functional cardiac pathology and to explore the adverse effects of ectopic pacing on cardiac electrophysiology.

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The researchers here present a class of device that supports optical and electrical multisite stimulation in engineering designs that address these requirements, with formats that allow full subdermal implantation in small animal models such as rats and mice. The battery-free operation and control schemes rely on wireless interfaces that exploit magnetic resonant coupling. This feature omits the weight and bulk associated with battery packs, along with the need to replace and/or recharge, thereby allowing for indefinite operation with minimal influence on natural animal behaviors. The tether-free nature of such devices also allows for paradigms with fully conscious, freely moving subjects, in isolation or in social groups.

By decreasing the size of a wireless pacemaker to about the size of a dime, the goal is for doctors to one day place several pacemakers across the heart. Having multiple wireless pacemakers on the heart at once can improve the quality of resynchronization therapy as the devices can be programmed externally to synchronize cardiac excitation and contraction, thus making the devices more efficient, effective and comfortable for patients.

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The study, "Wireless, battery-free, fully implantable multimodal and multisite pacemakers for applications in small animal models," is published in the journal Nature Communications.

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13637-w