07-19-02 (Little Rock) The world’s first automatic wearable
defibrillator is now available at UAMS Medical Center, and a patient
here is the first in Arkansas to receive the device.
The patient has been hospitalized for 11 months, but the LifeVest™
Wearable Defibrillator will enable her to go home within days of this
announcement.
"I’m excited. I think it will be
easy to wear," Lisa Ritterbush of Murfreesboro, Ark., said today.
Mrs. Ritterbush, who is on a waiting list for a heart transplant,
added "UAMS has been so wonderful this year. Everyone here has
been like family to us. I’m going to miss them."
The life-saving LifeVest™, a non-invasive device that is worn under
normal clothing and weighs only three pounds, detects and treats
cardiac arrest in order to prevent death from cardiac arrest death.
Abnormal heart rhythms can cause cardiac arrest. Of the approximately
350,000 cardiac arrest deaths in the U.S. each year, an estimated 95
percent die within 10 minutes of the event’s onset. When every
moment counts, the wait for defibrillation therapy to provide
essential electric stimulation to the heart can be life-threatening.
"This may not be the primary therapy to treat patients at high
risk for sudden cardiac death, but if offers patients who are not
candidates for implantable devices an important option. Many patients
now can have both the freedom to live outside the hospital and the
security of immediate defibrillation," said Eugene Smith, M.D.,
heart transplant medical director at UAMS Medical Center.
Until recently, patients in need of
defibrillation therapy had to either depend on emergency services or
undergo surgery for an implantable defibrillator. Now, people at risk
for cardiac arrest have a non-invasive option that improves their
chance of survival. The LifeVest™ provides constant monitoring and
immediate protection. Creators of the LifeVest™ received approval by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to provide the device to
patients in December.
The LifeVest™ is the first personal
defibrillator that can be worn outside the body rather than implanted
in the chest. The device continuously monitors the patient’s heart
to detect life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms. If a
life-threatening rhythm is detected and the patient is unconscious,
the device delivers an electrical shock to restore normal rhythm.
The device also stores information about how the patient’s heart is
functioning for his or her cardiologist to regularly review. LIFECOR,
Inc., manufactures the LifeVest™.
To make an appointment with Dr. Smith
or one of the other heart failure experts at UAMS Medical Center, call
Carol Davison, R.N., coordinator of the Heart Failure Treatment
Program, at 501-686-5880.
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