Belizean hearts installed with Pacemakers
They’ve been around the medical world for decades, but it’s only now that residents of the jewel will be benefiting from the device known as a pacemaker. And with a generation of Belizeans growing up on a diet of greasy fried chicken, these hearts will need all the help they can get. Patrick Jones has the story.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The groundbreaking operations, for Belize that is, were done at the operating theatre at the K.H.M.H.. Everything went like clockwork today, and by the end of the day, five Belizeans had new and improved heartbeats, thanks to the non-invasive surgery.
Dr. Fernando Cuellar, Dir. of Medical Services
“It’s what is termed as the installation of a Pacemaker, Pacemaker being the internal battery for the heart. Unfortunately, the elderly especially, these batteries seem to naturally run out then you have to put in an external battery. Pacemaker is installed so as to keep the heart beating.”
Cuellar, along with another resident medical practitioner at K.H.M.H., understudied the team of visiting doctors who conducted the installation of the devices. The Director of Medical Services says that while there are no cardiologists currently on staff who can perform the operations, those who need one, need not fear.
Dr Fernando Cuellar
“It’s quite safe. It’s considered a minor surgery actually. It’s nothing that could be considered major surgery. The procedure where just a little cut or incision on the skin and passing a special electrode and so forth.”
Doctor David Morton is the leader of the team of doctors from the United States who are donating their services to make life easier for patients with heart problems in Belize. Dr Morton says there is no anaesthesia, just a local numbing of the area to be operated on.
Dr. David Morton, Cardiologist
“Well the procedure is not particularly invasive. That’s the good part about it. What we do is we go up right under the collarbone area. We numb up the area with some local numbing medication and then just make a small incision just in the skin. The device then actually lies just under the skin. There are two little wires then that are connected to the device that we slide in through the vein that goes right under your collarbone and these two wires then go down into the heart.”
It’s a relatively simple operation and the procedure lasts for about an hour. But doctor Morton says the benefits of the pacemakers can last for up to twenty years.
Dr. David Morton
“The pacemaker is for people who are having very slow heart rates. Sometimes people’s heart rate may be so slow that they are passing out, or sometimes if it continues to get worse the heart could even stop and the patient could die. So what the device does, is it has a micro circuitry in it, as well as some very powerful but very small batteries. The micro circuitry sits in there and watches your heart rate, watches your heartbeat and we can calibrate it to whatever we want to. But we might set it for instance such that if your heart rate ever went below sixty beats per minute, that the device will automatically give you a heart beat and then therefore can control your heart rate from going too slow and keep you from passing out.”
The normal adult heartbeat is between sixty and a hundred beats per minute. But more than keeping the pulse at a steady rate, Dr. Morton says doctors can communicate with the pacemaker to find out about the patients progress.
Dr. David Morton
“It has some very sophisticates telemetry devices in it which means we can communicate with the pacemaker after its implanted, even over the next ten to twenty years with a little device that sends radio waves to it. And by doing those adjustments we could either increase the battery output, we can change the heart rate we want the patient to have. We can really change anything we want. We can also go back and ask the Pacemaker what it’s been doing over the last year and what that patient’s heart rhythm has been doing. And that kind of equipment we are going to donate as well to the local Belizean doctors, so they can follow up the patients. And then I also set up with them a communications programme, so that they can contact us with any questions or problems that might arise.”
The pacemakers installed in the operations conducted over the last two days, would normally cost twelve thousand U.S. dollars. But through the Mercy Care Centre, the procedure was available free to Belizeans who simply could not afford the operation on their own.
Marva Nicholas, Dir. Mercy Care Centre
“We bring in cardiologists on a yearly basis to assist with our consultation process at Mercy Clinic. After our July consultations we realized that we had several patients on a waiting list for too long, and with little time on the side of these patients we decided we need to make a go for trying to get these implantations done in the most affordable means available.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
The total value of the donated services and equipment is approximately two hundred thousand U.S. dollars.
