Patients with pacemakers and defibrillators are about twice as likely to have minor and life-threatening complications when having them removed if old wiring was left behind in earlier procedures to replace or upgrade devices, a U.S. study suggests.
Researchers analyzed data on surgery outcomes for 1,386 patients having devices removed because of infections, including a subset of 323 people who had abandoned leads - the wires that deliver energy from pacemakers and defibrillators to the heart muscle.
Doctors were unable to remove the devices and all of the leads without serious complications in 13 percent of patients who had abandoned wires, compared to a 3.7 percent failure rate for patients who didn’t have abandoned leads.
