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E-book
Author Jeffrey, Kirk

Title Machines in our hearts : the cardiac pacemaker, the implantable defibrillator, and American health care / Kirk Jeffrey
Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 370 pages) : illustrations
Contents "CONTENTS"; "ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES"; "ACKNOWLEDGMENTS"; "INTRODUCTION"; "Chapter 1 HEART BLOCK AND THE HEART TICKLER"; "Chapter 2 THE WAR ON HEART DISEASE AND THE INVENTION OF CARDIAC PACING"; "Chapter 3 HEART SURGEONS REDEFINE CARDIAC PACING"; "Chapter 4 THE MULTIPLE INVENTION OF IMPLANTABLE PACEMAKERS"; "Chapter 5 MAKING THE PACEMAKER SAFE AND RELIABLE"; "Chapter 6 THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE PACEMAKER"; "Chapter 7 THE PACEMAKER BECOMES A FLEXIBLE MACHINE"; "Chapter 8 SLOWING THE PACE: THE INDUSTRY'S TIME OF TROUBLES."
"Chapter 9 COMPETITION THROUGH INNOVATION: ACCELERATING THE PACE OF CHANGE"; "Chapter 10 PREVENTING SUDDEN CARDIAC DEATH: THE IMPLANTABLE DEFIBRILLATOR"; "Chapter 11 THE 1990S AND BEYOND: 'WHEN LIFE DEPENDS ON MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY'"; "APPENDIX A DEVICE RELIABILITY, QUALIFICATION TESTS, AND IMPROVEMENTS"; "APPENDIX B NUMBER OF IMPLANTATIONS"; "APPENDIX C ICHD PACEMAKER IDENTIFICATION CODE"; "ABBREVIATIONS"; "NOTES"; "BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE"; "INDEX."
Summary Annotation Today hundreds of thousands of Americans carry pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) within their bodies. These battery-powered machines - small computers, in fact - deliver electricity to the heart to correct dangerous disorders of the heartbeat. But few doctors, patients, or scholars know the history of these devices or how "heart-rhythm management" evolved into a multi-billion-dollar manufacturing and service industry. Machines in Our Hearts tells the story of these two implantable medical devices. Kirk Jeffrey, a historian of science and technology, traces the development of knowledge about the human heartbeat and follows surgeons, cardiologists, and engineers as they invent and test a variety of electronic devices. Numerous small manufacturing firms jumped into pacemaker production but eventually fell by the wayside, leaving only three American companies in the business today. Jeffrey profiles pioneering heart surgeons, inventors from the realms of engineering and medical research, and business leaders who built heart-rhythm management into an industry with thousands of employees and annual revenues in the hundreds of millions. As Jeffrey shows, the pacemaker (first implanted in 1958) and the ICD (1980) embody a paradox of high-tech health care: these technologies are effective and reliable but add billions to the nation's medical bill because of the huge growth in the number of patients who depend on implanted devices to manage their heartbeats
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-352) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Print version record
Subject Cardiac pacing -- History
Cardiac pacemakers.
Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators.
Pacemaker, Artificial
Defibrillators, Implantable
Cardiac Pacing, Artificial
Cardiac Pacing, Artificial -- history
Defibrillators, Implantable -- history
Pacemaker, Artificial -- history
MEDICAL -- Surgery -- General.
Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators
Cardiac pacemakers
Cardiac pacing
Pacemakers.
Defibrillatoren.
SUBJECT United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0801876168
9780801876165