St Jude Medical announced the launch of the Accent MRI pacemaker and Tendril MRI lead in India. The new pacemaker and lead allow patients to undergo full-body, high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
Each year approximately one million pacemakers are implanted worldwide, and it is estimated that up to 75% of pacemaker patients could benefit from MRI scans during the lifetime of their devices. The new Accent MRI pacemaker system is an advanced pacing platform that provides wireless telemetry and algorithms to address individual patient conditions, with the added benefit of MRI conditional scanning capability.
Ulhas Pandurangi, chief electrophysiologist at Madras Medical Mission in Chennai, India, said: “Undertaking MRI scans in patients with pacemakers has previously been fraught with technical difficulties and challenges, and the safety was not clear. I feel I can now advise patients that a magnetic scan can be performed without compromising the safety of the pacemaker or the patient. In this particular case, I chose the Accent MRI pacemaker because this elderly patient had neurological and orthopedic ailments, and may one day benefit from an MRI scan.”
The system features an MRI Activator device that provides a simple alternative option for programming the device to the appropriate MRI mode for use during the scan. A single button press on the handheld MRI Activator device can be used to program the specific device parameters to be used during the MRI scan. These parameters are pre-selected by the patient’s physician and stored in the Accent MRI pacemaker.
“The Accent MRI pacemaker has many advantages over what is currently available in India. It is a state-of-the-art pacemaker that offers full body, high-resolution scanning capability without restrictions, which is especially important to patients who may need an MRI scan in the chest and abdominal area,” said Kaustav Banerjee, country manager of India for St Jude Medical. “We are very pleased to offer this innovative technology to Madras Medical Mission as well as other hospitals.”
