The patient had suffered severe coronary.
She was in a very critical condition.
Following her heart attack she had developed an acute heart block. Her conducting system was all out of kilter. The lower chamber of her heart just wasn't keeping pace with the upper chamber. Unless something was done to help her, the patient would undoubtedly die
An electrical pacemaker was the answer. But minutes were important. The usual methods of introducing pacemaker wires into the heart were too time-consuming and involved the moving of a very ill patient.
So surgeons at the Louisiana State University Medical School decided to tackle the problem in another way.
First they threaded a hollow, stainless steel needle, with a long piece of stainless steel wire. Then, with the aid of a local anesthetic, they stuck the needle through the wall of the patient's chest directly into her heart. They attached the other end of the wire to the pacemaker. Then they turned on the pacemaker. Immediately it began sending regularly-timed, rhythmic currents to the patient's heart. This gave her a chance to recover; made it possible for her to keep on living until her own natural pacemaker could take over again.
Amazing Gadget
How effective is this comparatively new technique?
Heart surgeons at LSU believe it saves about 50 per cent of the patients. Actually the LSU surgeons are helping to pioneer the technique. Only one other surgeon in the nation is known to have used it.
There's nothing new about the pacemaker, of course.
According to Dr. Harold Albert, associate professor ofsur-gery at LSU, and .Dr. Bert A. Glass, assistant professor Bf
surgery, patients have been kept alive for years with this, amazing little gadget.
Formerly, however, its use was restricted to people suffering from chronic heart blocks.
Why is a pacemaker needed? Well this is the way the surgeons explained it:
"As you know the heart starts beating in the upper right-hand chamber of the heart. Now in this upper right-hand chamber] there's a special piece of tissue which initiates the heart-beat. From this, spot the beat spreads all over the heart. This makes the heart contract; helps pump blood to various parts of the body."
Dramatic Result
The surgeons said this piece of conductive tissue might well be compared to an electric wire carrying an electric current. If for some reason the conductive tissue is damaged, then the impulse does not get through to the lower chamber of the heart.
Dr. Albert said the average adult heart beats at the rate of 70 to 80 times a minute. But when the beating impulse does! not get through to the lower chamber, a situation develops in which the heart-beat in the lower chamber may slow down to 20 times a minute. This means the lower chamber of the leart isn't working hard enough; that it needs a bit of spurring.
"The result of introducing the wires directly into the heart and pacing the heart electrically is quite dramatic," Dr. Albert added. "Within seconds the patient s awake and within minutes the blood pressure may be near normal. Recovery then depends on the damage done to the heart by the 'coronary'."
