Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Ed Yeates ReportingA Utah hospital has become the first in this state to implant a new combined defibrillator and pacemaker that allows the patient's heart to be monitored no matter where they are in the world.
Darlene Elsner, Heart Patient: "I walked down the hall today and didn't get short of breath; made it down there and back."
Darlene Elsner got an implant for her heart at Salt Lake Regional Hospital last week. But this combined defibrillator and pacemaker is not what you'd expect. The system allows the patient to hook up to any telephone, anywhere and sort of visit a doctor without ever being there.
So on her next trip in her motor home, Darlene will be able to feed all the data about her pacemaker, defibrillator and how her heart is working, back to her doctor, perhaps hundreds of miles away.
Once Darlene makes her telephone hookups, the data could be transmitted over a secure Internet site to her doctor, Dr. Imran Zubair.
Imran Zubair, M.D., Cardiologist: "The information we get off the Internet, so to speak, or off the computer, is very similar to what she could do or what she could give us is she were sitting in our clinic."
But it's not just this visit she would normally make ever six months. The Guidant system can actually feed daily information into the secure Internet site while the patient is sleeping.
And not only uploading, what about downloading back to the patient's own device, making adjustments, if necessary?
Dr. Zubair: "That's exactly where this technology is headed."
Not yet, but that's the next step down the road.
Dr. Zubair says the new system could prove especially beneficial to patients living in rural Utah who often have to travel six plus hours for a pacemaker evaluation with their doctor.
