What's a pacemaker jacket?

Heart Zapping vest

by sbassmeister - 2008-04-11 10:04:45

This may be what you are talking about. This is an article that was in today's newspaper in Lincoln, NE. You can find it with video at www.journalstar.com.

Heart-zapping vest helps pregnant woman
By MARK ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
Friday, Apr 11, 2008 - 12:29:03 am CDT
Her heart skipped a beat, and then maybe a few more beats.

“It feels like my heart is in my throat, about to jump out of my chest,” said 26-year-old Natasjha Murrain, 27 weeks pregnant with her third child, a girl.

Sunday, having fretted over what felt like frequent anxiety attacks for nearly a week, the Lincoln woman called her mentor, studying to be a nurse.

“Is this normal?”

More calls led Murrain Sunday night to Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center, where she remained Thursday, bored and under constant monitoring.

She wanted to go home to her kids, Amaya-Nachole, 6, and Joshua Fernandez, 17 months.

Earlier in this pregnancy, Murrain spent the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas hospitalized and on a feeding tube because of severe morning sickness. That finally ended in February.

Thursday afternoon, Dr. Pete Gallagher fitted her with a wearable cardioverter defibrillator — a fully automated, heart-zapping vest, and set her free.

The LifeVest from Zoll Lifecor will continuously check for dangerous heart rhythms and fire a calming shock if necessary.

First, a warning sound, “quite loud,” said Gallagher, an electrophysiologist with the Nebraska Heart Institute. The wearer, if conscious, has a brief period to stop the automated firing sequence.

A conscious person probably doesn’t need a shock, Gallagher said, and it hurts. If the wearer can’t stop it, the vest oozes gel to form a good electrical contact and then fires, repeatedly if unsuccessful.

The vest first received FDA approval in 2001, but officials at Saint Elizabeth can’t recall it being used locally. Wearers typically fit the description of unique circumstances.

“If she weren’t pregnant,” Gallagher said, “there would be a few other options. They could put her on stronger medications, burn the parts of her heart where bad signals originate or implant a permanent defibrillator in her chest.

“In her case, fortunately,” he said, “some fairly modest medications are able to control it pretty nicely.”

But he worries that as her pregnancy progresses, as her heart stretches under the stress of additional fluid from the baby, “Maybe the medications won’t work as well.

“From our perspective,” he said, “it’s a little unsettling to wonder whether medications won’t work.”

That would put both mother and baby at risk.

Murrain has runs of ventricular tachycardia lasting up to 5-6 seconds, he said, sometimes followed by a normal beat and more tachycardia. The fear is the tachycardia could turn constant or deteriorate into ventricular fibrillation, an ineffective, rapid pulsing.

Murrain never noticed it if she had the problem before. She ran track and did cheerleading at Omaha Bryan Senior High School.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I’m 26 years old. Who wants to have their heart having problems at 26?”

But the vest is great.

“It’s saving my life and my baby,” Murrain said at Saint Elizabeth just prior to being fitted with it.

She might call it a freedom vest.

“I get to be at home with my kids instead of spending three months here (in the hospital).”

Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238 or mandersen@journalstar.com.