Medtronic Introduces New Pacer Line

Medtronic announced a new pacemaker line publically. From what I can tell, the new feature on these devices is "atrial capture management (ACM)." ACM is where the device can auto-adjust the output of the atrial lead voltage output to assure capture. The devices do have the cool AAI (atrial or upper chamber-only pacing) to DDD mode(upper and lower pacing as needed pacing) switching capability available in their former Enrhythm line of pacemakers to avoid excessive ventricular pacing. I'll see if I can find out other features soon to share them with the blog-o-sphere. I haven't heard of any REALLY new features that will make me switch to these pacemakers... but even Medtronic's website still does not have info on these devices quite yet.

Although the names of the devices are a bit fluffy in my view (I mean Adapta, Versa and Sensia?!? - these sound like some cologne or sex aid, perhaps!), ", at least they avoided the "sound-alike" problem I commented upon regarding their last product line. I guess I was looking for some of the macho names like stents get to have: like "Cobra", "Cypher", "Taxus", "Multilink Ultra", for instance.

:)

Now, the cost? I'm sure they'll be at the top of the spectrum for now....

-Wes

11:03 AM CST Addendum: For the non-EP folks, sorry about the technical speak, but here's what I've learned about the new line of pacers: the Sensia line will replace the old Sigma and Kappa pacemaker product lines, the Versa will replace the Enpulse product line (it will have the "Search AV" feature but NOT the "mimimum ventricular pacing (MVP)" feature), and the Adapta product line will become their "top-of-the-line" pacemaker similar to the Enrhythm pacemaker (i.e. will have the MVP feature) but will NOT have the anti-atrial tachycardia features of the Enrhythm pacemaker. Also the Adapta pacemakers will be capable of accomodating unipolar leads as well as bipolar leads (the Enrhythm device MUST use bipolar leads). Hope this helps!

--Wes