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Pacemaker Clinic, Victor Parsonnet

MCV/Q, Medical College of Virginia Quarterly

Pacemaker longevity is a serious problem to overcome. However, our immediate concern is to get as much useful life from a pacemaker as possible. On the average, pacemakers fail in about 23 months. The only pacemaker that lasted much longer was a fixed-rate unit, the Medtronic 5860, which is no longer available. A past suggestion in handling this problem has been to change the pacemaker electively at an arbitrary time, but that time has varied tremendously as the manufacturers once selected 30 months, and more recently 15 months. If a pacemaker is replaced at 15 months, very few of them …