A new ground-breaking technology was recently used at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) where two cardiologists, Dr. David Birnie and Dr. Pablo Nery, implanted a new innovative leadless defibrillator, the subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (S-ICD), to a 18 year-old patient. Under Health Canada’s special access program, this was only the third time this new type of ICD had been implanted in Canada. Conventional defibrillators, known as transvenous defibrillators, are implanted with wires, called the leads, that snake through veins into the heart. When the defibrillator identifies any dangerous heartbeat, it delivers a shock through the wires to return the heart to its normal rhythm and allow it to get back to pumping blood steadily throughout the body.
