INDICATIONS FOR PACEMAKER

A pacemaker is defined as ‘an electronic device for use in certain cases of heart disease to assume the functions of the natural cardiac pacemaker’. Interventional therapy for arrhythmias has been performed in human medicine since the 1930s, and the first pacemaker was implanted in a person in 1957. In veterinary medicine, the first pacemaker was implanted in a dog in 1968. Since then, the devices have evolved, allowing implantation via a peripheral vein rather than the patient having to undergo a thoracotomy. Specific programming of the pacemaker allows an ever more normal physiological environment to be recreated. THE implantation of pacemakers is becoming a more widely available therapy in dogs, with approximately 50 such procedures performed annually in the UK. This article provides the general practitioner with an overview of pacemakers and their indications in veterinary practice, emphasising the clinical conditions that require pacemaker implantation and the diagnostic procedures needed in these cases