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News Feature
Nature 435, 14-15 (5 May 2005) | doi:10.1038/435014a; Published online 4 May 2005
Hotwire my heart
Duncan Graham-Rowe1
- Duncan Graham-Rowe is a freelance journalist in Brighton, UK. He has a potentially lethal heart arrhythmia for which the only treatment is an ICD.
Abstract
Growing numbers of people are being implanted with electronic devices that can automatically restart a failing heart. But have the risks and benefits been adequately assessed? Duncan Graham-Rowe investigates.
Cardiologist Michael Sweeney has vivid memories of the day he inadvertently set off an explosion inside a 79-year-old man's chest. It was 2001, and the patient had come into the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for a routine check on his implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD.
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