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Artificial pacemaker facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Pacemaker GuidantMeridianSR
An Artificial pacemaker

A pacemaker is a device created by Earl Bakken that helps to regulate your heart. It uses electrical pulses. If your heart is beating too fast, the pacemaker slows it down. If your heart slows down, the pacemaker will slightly speed it up, so that it goes back to a normal heart beat.

Images for kids

  • AtrialPacemakerECG

    An ECG in a person with a single-chamber pacemaker to the atrium. Note the circle around one of the sharp electrical spikes in the position where the P wave would be expected.

  • Duelchamber

    An ECG of a person with a dual-chamber pacemaker

  • Pacemaker dependent asystole

    ECG rhythm strip of a threshold determination in a patient with a temporary (epicardial) ventricular pacemaker. The epicardial pacemaker leads were placed after the patient collapsed during aortic valve surgery. In the first half of the tracing, pacemaker stimuli at 60 beats per minute result in a wide QRS complex with a right bundle branch block pattern. Progressively weaker pacing stimuli are administered, which results in asystole in the second half of the tracing. At the end of the tracing, distortion results from muscle contractions due to a (short) hypoxic seizure. Because decreased pacemaker stimuli do not result in a ventricular escape rhythm, the patient can be said to be pacemaker-dependent and needs a definitive pacemaker.

  • Fluoroscopy pacemaker leads right atrium ventricle

    Right atrial and right ventricular leads as visualized under x-ray during a pacemaker implant procedure. The atrial lead is the curved one making a U shape in the upper left part of the figure.

  • Biotronik Philos SR Single-chamber cardiac pacemaker 29.01.21 JM

    Single-chamber VVIR/AAIR pacemaker

  • Cardiac resynchronisation therapy

    Three leads can be seen in this example of a cardiac resynchronization device: a right atrial lead (solid black arrow), a right ventricular lead (dashed black arrow), and a coronary sinus lead (red arrow). The coronary sinus lead wraps around the outside of the left ventricle, enabling pacing of the left ventricle. Note that the right ventricular lead in this case has two thickened aspects that represent conduction coils and that the generator is larger than typical pacemaker generators, demonstrating that this device is both a pacemaker and a cardioverter-defibrillator, capable of delivering electrical shocks for dangerously fast abnormal ventricular rhythms.

  • X-ray of pacemaker with right atrial and ventricular lead

    Posteroanterior and lateral chest radiographs of a pacemaker with normally located leads in the right atrium (white arrow) and right ventricle (black arrowhead), respectively.

  • PaceMakerRemoteMonitoringDevicesTwoKinds

    Two types of remote monitoring devices used by pacemaker patients

  • Arne Larsson

    In 1958, Arne Larsson (1915–2001) became the first to receive an implantable pacemaker. He had 26 devices during his life and campaigned for other patients needing pacemakers.

  • PPM

    Illustration of implanted cardiac pacemaker showing locations of cardiac pacemaker leads

  • Cardiac pacer with sold-state power source

    The first lithium-iodide cell-powered pacemaker. Invented by Anthony Adducci and Art Schwalm. Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. 1972

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Marcapasos cardíaco artificial para niños

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