October 2010:

MRT-Compliant Pacemaker Introduced at the DHZB

A cardiac pacemaker can restore normal heart rhythm in patients with rhythm disturbances (slow rhythm or bradycardia) and heart rate of below 60 beats per minute or conduction blocks. Typical symptoms are dizziness, fatigue, reduced exercise tolerance and even fainting. Nowadays the pacemaker, generally implanted in the chest, is the standard treatment for bradycardia. But what happens when patients with a pacemaker need a magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) examination for diagnostic purposes?

MRT is a diagnostic procedure that uses magnetic fields and radio waves to visualize inner organs and tissue. It is the best procedure for early recognition of strokes, for tumor diagnosis and for the diagnosis of diseases of the body’s movement apparatus. Until recently MRT examination was not possible in patients with pacemakers since the magnetic fields of the MRT machine influence the pacemaker and can damage the stimulation leads and endanger the patient.

As Prof. Eckart Fleck, director of the Department of Internal Medicine / Cardiology at the DHZB, explained, this problem has so far been solved by reprogramming or switching off the pacemaker during the MRT examination, which takes 20 to 40 minutes. However, for patients who have no native heart rhythm and are entirely dependent on the pacemaker this is not possible. It is these patients who are profiting the most from the new pacemaker devices that enable them to be examined by the non-invasive MRT method. These devices have been implanted in the past few weeks “not for routine treatment, only for particularly endangered patients,” as Fleck emphasized.