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Pacemakers need to be replaced every 5-15 years as the battery wears out [1]. It's not like a visit to the dentist either, it's a major surgery. I also think yo

Pacemakers need to be replaced every 5-15 years as the battery wears out [1]. It's not like a visit to the dentist either, it's a major surgery. I also think you underestimate how rapidly a medical device company can make a dramatic change to the design, have it tested and approved, and distributed inside everyday people. Yes it's "coordinated" but the timeline is extremely long compared to how often the phone market is being pumped full of magnets. For what it's worth I think it's still up to the user to be safe and know what they can and cannot have up against their chest. But to say that the medical community can just be "agile" about this is to really misunderstand how those devices are certified and designed. [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/implantable-device-replacement-procedure https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

tener 5y ago
Nowhere in my comment did I suggest a timeline for the design change to happen. Yes, it will take years, but it cannot happen at all if the device manufacturers keep blaming others for their poor designs.
maj0rhn 5y ago
And ICD is not a pacemaker. An ICD costs about $30K. When its battery wears out, the battery is replaced, not the ICD. So there will be no replacements of already-implanted ICDs because of this problem. Also, it is a big deal to redesign an implanted medical device, as it should be. These are not tongue depressors. ICDs are the most tightly regulated device the FDA reviews.
cstross 5y ago
> It's not like a visit to the dentist either, it's a major surgery. My father had a pacemaker, and for long enough to receive a battery swap. The battery for that particular model was implanted under his shoulder blade; the swap-out was performed under local anaesthetic. The original implantation was a bit more complex from a surgical perspective, requiring keyhole surgery and an angioplasty to run the wire around his heart as well as to implant the battery and controller. But the point is: these devices can be installed and expected to perform for decades, so the engineering design is of necessity highly conservative and has long-term maintenance in mind. It's also safety-critical: if the device malfunctions, people can die. PS: a pacemaker is not an implanted defibrillator. (Also, my father died in 2017, so what I'm describing is probably a decade or two behind the state of the art.)

tener 5y ago

Nowhere in my comment did I suggest a timeline for the design change to happen. Yes, it will take years, but it cannot happen at all if the device manufacturers keep blaming others for their poor designs.

maj0rhn 5y ago

And ICD is not a pacemaker. An ICD costs about $30K. When its battery wears out, the battery is replaced, not the ICD. So there will be no replacements of already-implanted ICDs because of this problem. Also, it is a big deal to redesign an implanted medical device, as it should be. These are not tongue depressors. ICDs are the most tightly regulated device the FDA reviews.

cstross 5y ago

> It's not like a visit to the dentist either, it's a major surgery. My father had a pacemaker, and for long enough to receive a battery swap. The battery for that particular model was implanted under his shoulder blade; the swap-out was performed under local anaesthetic. The original implantation was a bit more complex from a surgical perspective, requiring keyhole surgery and an angioplasty to run the wire around his heart as well as to implant the battery and controller. But the point is: these devices can be installed and expected to perform for decades, so the engineering design is of necessity highly conservative and has long-term maintenance in mind. It's also safety-critical: if the device malfunctions, people can die. PS: a pacemaker is not an implanted defibrillator. (Also, my father died in 2017, so what I'm describing is probably a decade or two behind the state of the art.)