This is what happened in recent days at the Dimiccoli hospital in Barletta where a 75-year-old man arrived – to whom, after a previous recent hospitalization, the LifeVest had been applied precisely to safeguard the total restoration of cardiac function – reporting that he had felt a sudden electric discharge on his chest while he played with his granddaughters.
Alerted by the emergency room staff, Dr. Francesco Palma, head of the Cardiostimulation Clinic of the Cardiology-ICU, analyzed with a telemetric interrogation the LifeVest worn by the patient – with a history of chronic ischemic heart disease, revascularised in the past with coronary angioplasty and recently already hospitalized for acute and severe pulmonary edema left ventricular dysfunction – which detected the appearance of “ventricular flutter”, a very serious cardiac arrhythmia immediately and correctly recognized by the device itself which automatically delivered an electric shock, capable of effectively interrupting the arrhythmia, cardioverting it and thus saving the patient’s life.
“During hospitalization in our Cardiological Intensive Care Unit – explains Dr. Giuseppe Diaferia, Director of the Complex Cardiology Operating Unit-ICU – the patient underwent, successfully, an operation with which a definitive defibrillator was implanted subcutaneous which allowed him to be discharged after just three days of hospitalization and to embrace his family again. The story of this patient reiterated to us how the appropriate use of medical devices, available today, can make the difference between life and death. death and how these same devices make the discharge of patients at very high risk of sudden death quicker and safer”.
