Tag Archives: cardiac pacing

Professor Richard Sutton Introduction Permanent cardiac pacing began in Sweden in 1958 with Rune Elmqvist designing a device, and the cardiac surgeon, Åke Senning, implanting it. The US and UK followed quickly. The first UK implant was at St. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London, in 1960 with Aubrey Leatham, cardiologist, and Harold Siddons, cardiac surgeon. Not to be omitted from this pioneering group was Geoff Davies, engineer. The implant was a success, and I had the privilege of looking after that patient in 1967 when I joined the St. George’s team. As raconteur of these stories, it is clear that I was a late arrival. One of m

He felt that it was not the drugs per se, but the needle used to inject them that initiated an electrical impulse. Hyman went on to develop and patent the first cardiac pacemaker (his term) in 1932 using a needle electrode. It was another 20 years before Paul Zoll published his experience of two patients he managed to pace via an external generator and hypodermic needles attached to the chest wall.1 Thankfully things have progressed slightly since then, and over the last 70 years we have advanced to placing an electrode transvenously rather than transcutaneously. The generator is battery powered and smaller, but the basic principle remains un

Perhaps in common with other DGH general cardiologists, I confess to having never read a book on cardiac pacing, let alone implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). This 5th edition of Cardiac Pacing & ICDs is a thorough work. The diagrams are clear and sufficient to make this book easy on the eye and a pleasure to read. Each chapter is also very adequately and not excessively referenced. I found the chapter on temporary pacing very applicable to my everyday experiences. Particularly useful was discussion surrounding the requirements (or not) for temporary pacing in patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery with various degrees of con

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