My name's Dr. Gupta. I'm a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Atrium Medical Center.
A defibrillator is a common term that people know, most commonly people are aware of external defibrillators. Now they are available at public places, like airports, churches and, you know, sports stadiums and all that stuff, so, it's the same concept as a defibrillator, but an ICD is an implantable cardioverter defibrillator.
Defibrillation itself is, is a process where we shock the heart out of a fatal, potentially fatal arrhythmia back into a normal rhythm.
Defibrillators are most commonly implanted in potential victims of sudden cardiac death. Our focus of treatment for this problem is to identify potential victims and protect them with an implantable defibrillator. An implantable defibrillator would then have the ability to recognize that arrhythmia, which is called as ventricular fibrillation and/or ventricular tachycardia, and that defibrillator would treat that arrhythmia before any harm is done.
Typical candidates would be patients who have suffered a previous heart attack or have an extremely weak heart and most people are now aware of it, a term called ejection fraction, which is measuring the pumping ability of your heart and if your ejection fraction is less than 35%, typically, you would be a candidate for a defibrillator. Normal ejection fraction is 55% or greater.
defibrillators these days have also become fairly small in size. These can now be, or these are now implanted very similar to a pacemaker and implanted, again, under the skin, under skin under your, below your left collarbone, pretty much like a pacemaker. Mostly done under local anesthetic and some sedation. We make an incision on the skin, create a pocket, again, thread in one or 2 electrical wires, called leads, to your heart, and connect it to the defibrillator and close it up. The only difference, practical difference, between a pacemaker and a defibrillator, is defibrillator is about 2-1/2 to 3 times larger in size, so it's going to create a larger lump on your chest, but other than that, the procedure is very similar and it's typically, again, one night in the hospital and resume normal activities within a day or two.
