Leadless and scarless pacing: towards symbiotic nanogenerators
Around 30 years ago, when our paper describing a leadless miniature pacemaker implanted endocardially was published in a decent quality but limited recognition scientific journal,1 the response did not suggest that our peers were very excited.At major cardiology conferences, I was often called upon to explain the advantages of a ‘bullet pacemaker’, as the participants called our experimental device, compared with traditional transvenous pacing. However, we remained optimistic that the future of heart rhythm devices would lie in the concepts of miniaturization, leadless and scarless pacemakers, and—indeed why not—devices fuelled with energy by the myocardium itself.
