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CHI to stock pacemakers
Nurse Claudette Holder with a pacemaker programmer.
“Devices to be available within a day” – Dr Stephen
By Sharmain Cornette
A mutual understanding between Medtronic, the world’s leading provider of medical technology, and the Caribbean Heart Institute (CHI), will soon see the local cardiac facility being allowed to stock pacemakers.
This is according to CHI’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Gary Stephens, who revealed that this development is hinged on the fact that patients have over time been made to wait to acquire pacemakers from the institute. However, through collaboration with Medtronic this situation, he said, is likely to be addressed within a matter of months.
A pacemaker is a medical device which uses electrical impulses, delivered by electrodes contacting the heart muscles, to regulate the beating of the heart. The primary purpose of a pacemaker is to maintain an adequate heart rate, either because the heart’s native pacemaker is not fast enough, or there is a block in the heart’s electrical conduction system.
According to Dr Stephens, these devices are usually shipped from Europe but their leads are shipped from the United States thus taking a considerable time to arrive in Guyana. In fact, it is about seven days that a patient may have to wait before being fitted with a pacemaker. “Let’s say somebody comes in around 5pm (17:00 hours) Friday afternoon…the whole weekend has to pass before we are able to place an order on Monday…Then it is shipped out of Europe and it wouldn’t get here until Thursday or Friday, and when it does arrive, we have to deal with customs and getting it cleared, so the average time for somebody who needs a pacemaker works out to about seven days.”
However, a person in need of a pacemaker will not be left without medical assistance, as Dr Stephens noted that they are afforded temporary pacemakers until the device arrives. Patients, however, are not allowed to leave the facility with the temporary pacemaker during the waiting period. “We are going to fix any patient’s pacing problem but until that pacemaker comes we will have to keep them here…”
It was for this reason, Dr Stephens disclosed, that an understanding was forged with Medtronic to allow CHI to stock the devices.
“Once we have those and somebody comes here with a pacing problem, whether in the morning or at night, they can get one and go home…”
This move comes even as the cardiac facility seeks to restructure its mode of operation. For instance, in the area of cardiac catheterisation and angioplasty, significant changes have been made. These changes, Dr. Stephens said, enable CHI to undertake the aforementioned procedures at virtually any time.
“Before that, capability did not exist, not only in terms of personnel but in terms of equipment and supplies. Right now we have everything on the ground, but in the past, a lot of times we used to have to wait for stuff to come in, and we are hoping to transition that for surgery as well.”
According to the Cardiac Surgeon, CHI is poised for further improvement, even as its nursing staff continues to display a high level of performance. “Our nursing staff is excellent…We have continuous training for them…and I was impressed recently with how one of our nurses was able to interrogate a pacemaker.”
Claudette Holder, a local nurse, is currently charged with interrogating pacemakers at CHI – an undertaking which was not possible a year ago, according to Dr Stephens.
“Before her, if you had a pacemaker problem, we had no one on the ground who could actually interrogate it with a programmer and know what the problem is and fix it. She was doing a pacemaker with me the last time I was down here and I was just blown away…It was as if I was doing it in New York. It is things like that which tell me that we are constantly getting better,” Dr Stephens noted.
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