Category Archives: Cardiac Electrophysiology

Cardiac Electrophysiology

Recharging ICDs Wirelessly

As far as I know this is not an April Fool’s joke. The article is two days old, and the patent does apparently exist.

A company called powercast has developed a way to capture energy from radio waves at a variety of frequencies, and to thereby wirelessly power devices. There is huge potential here for the implantable pacemaker/defibrillator business, as the devices currently have to be (surgically) replaced when the batteries run out. I think the current lifetimes are around 10 years.

Cardiac EP Finding of the Day

I say finding rather than fact, because sometimes a finding is later revealed to be incorrect, or subject to qualifications. Anyway, I read a lot of papers, and sometimes there are little useful nuggets of information that you might not be able to easily find if looking for them.

Here’s today’s.

According to Hearse et al 1977, the specific gravity of the left ventricular tissue of mongrel dogs is about 1.5.

I had no idea what the specific gravity of LV myocardium was. If asked to estimate, I probably would have placed it between 1 and 2, but I couldn’t have been much more specific. This could be useful when, say, someone gives concentrations in terms of wet weight of the myocardium.