Pacemaker Programmers Weigh In

Anyone who has ever been on call for the Electrophysiology Service has to check a patient's pacemaker or defibrillator once in a while. To do this, we have to know which company manufactured the patient's pacemaker or defibrillator so we can grab the appropriate programmer that allows us to "talk" to the device in question. Often, these devices are lugged to far ends of the hospital, found to be the wrong device for the patient's particular device, dropped, or a small piece of the necessary equipment is left behind and must be retrieved. Suffice it to say, these devices get heavy after a while.

Since none of the companies have elected to standardize their process of pacemaker interrogation so the clinicians only have to lug one such device to a patient's bedside, they have left themselves open to public ridicule.

Soooooo, in the spirit of "friendly competition," I've decided to have the first ever "Pacemaker Programmer Weigh-In." Will it make them want to come together in the interest of patient care? Probably not, but it's fun to think it might get them thinking about such an endeavor again.

This was a carefully-conducted experiment, audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers (just kidding), and performed on our carefully-calibrated and zero'd cath-lab scale. Proof of the process is shown:



So, which manufacturer has the heaviest programmer and which has the lightest?

What's the range of weights?

-Wes