World’s smallest pacemaker procedure at Keesler Air Force Ba

The Micra Transcatheter Pacing System is a new type of heart device that provides patients with the most advanced pacing technology at one tenth the size of a traditional pacemaker. Keesler Medical Center is the first Air Force hospital to offer this new procedure.
The Biloxi Air Force base offers this procedure to their beneficiaries and veterans from the Florida panhandle all the way through Louisiana. Today, Keesler medical physicians fitted the hospital’s first patient with this pacemaker.
The patient is now recovering. The smallest pacemaker in the world was just implanted into his heart. Keesler Medical Center is the first Air Force hospital to offer this procedure to patients with bradycardia, a slow heart rate condition that affects a lot of patients, decreasing their energy level and ability to enjoy life. Interventional Cardiologist Lt. Col. Matthew Hann said, “It’s similar to driving a car without an accelerator. You can coast along very slowly, but when it comes time to climb a hill, you don’t have an accelerator to get the RPM’s up to climb the hill and a heart rate is the same way.”
Comparable in size to a large vitamin, physicians opted to go with a smaller version because it does not require a wire underneath the skin or a surgical pocket to deliver a pacing therapy. “And there’s a small incision beneath the left collar bone to place this pacemaker so it’s a constant reminder that the patient had heart trouble,” said Lt. Col. Hann.
Now with this new pacemaker, patients will barely even know it’s there. The pacemaker is implanted using a catheter that deploys the pacemaker into the right ventricle and lasts about 12 years. The entire procedure takes about 30 minutes, leaving no scars and a safer alternative to its bulkier predecessor. “Risks of infection, risks of pulling the wire out of the muscle which would require us to go in and replace the wire back into the heart muscle, but what’s happened with advances in technology, we’ve taken this pacemaker and we’ve miniaturized all components,” said Lt. Col. Hann.