REPROGRAMMING COULD OPEN DOOR TO MRI-SAFE IMPLANTABLE DEVICES
Recent findings suggest that manufacturers of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) can make their products safe for patients who undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, a researcher said.
In considering potential design changes to implanted heart devices, a device's lead -- the electrical wire that connects the generator to the heart -- "seems to be much less of a problem than the actual generator [device] itself," said Henry Halperin, a professor of medicine, radiology and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
"It's been estimated that at least 50 percent of people implanted with medical devices will need an MRI scan," he said.
"The bottom line is to make the MRI safe, you need a lead system that will reject the MRI radio frequency, then the generators also need to be designed to protect against [it]."