Miniaturized heart device provides patients with the most advanced pacing technology available.

The Heart & Vascular Institute at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center is now offering a wireless pacemaker for patients with bradycardia, or slow or irregular heart rhythm. The device—Micra™ Transcatheter Pacing System (Medtronic®)—is an FDA-approved and Medicare-covered pacemaker one-tenth the size of conventional pacemakers.

Dr. David Feigenblum, an electrophysiologist at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, successfully implanted the hospital’s first Micra pacemaker. “Unlike traditional pacemakers, this device does not require cardiac wires, or leads, or a surgical pocket under the skin,” he said. “Thanks to its small size, we can deliver it through a catheter and implant it directly into the heart. That means it’s invisible outside of the body and avoids complications associated with leads.”

“Pacemakers have long been a life-changing way of restoring the heart’s normal rhythm and relieving symptoms like dizziness, fatigue and fainting,” Dr. Grant Simons, section chief of heart rhythm services at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, said. “This new device is really something special, and a great advancement for the treatment of individuals with bradycardia.”

The Micra™ Transcatheter Pacing System is also the first and only transcatheter pacing system to be approved for both 1.5 and 3 Tesla (T) full-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

To find an electrophysiologist performing this procedure, patients can call 844-33-MDNOW, the physician referral line for MDPartners of Englewood Hospital and Medical Center.