A new style of implantable defibrillator provides protection against sudden cardiac arrest without having electrical wires placed in the heart. Instead, all components of the device are sewn into place just beneath the skin.

The device -- which The Heart Group of Syracuse cardiologists, Traian Anghel, MD, and Jamal Ahmed, MD, began using this year at Upstate -- monitors a patient‘s heart rate and delivers a shock if necessary, “which essentially resets all of the electrical activity of the heart cells,” says Anghel.

He says a battery-operated pulse generator about the size of a deck of cards is placed beneath the skin below a patient‘s armpit. A wire electrode stretches below the skin from the generator to the breastbone above the heart. It senses the heart‘s electrical signals and transmits that data to the generator, and, if needed, delivers therapy back to the heart.

Implantable defibrillators have been in use for about 40 years. Earlier models rely on a wire to be threaded through a blood vessel, into the heart, across a valve and then attached to the heart wall.

Anghel says that for patients who are prone to a rapid heart rhythm called ventricular fibrillation, the risk of sudden cardiac death can be as high as 1 in 6 per year. He says an implantable defibrillator can significantly improve those odds.

Listen to Dr. Anghel and nurse Amy Tetrault in an interview for HealthLink on Air