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Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

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Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#121

Post by melq »

guhidalg wrote: post #106
sgtnoodle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have quite a bit of knowledge on the subject. I had to get a pacemaker a couple years ago, and am an embedded engineer. I hope to live another 50 years at least, so this is an interesting subject for me. Maybe my cardiologist is just trying to make me feel good, but he says my leads will likely last 30-50 years. Intuitively that seems unlikely, but we'll see. It's got to be one of the most engineer…

My heart sank when you mentioned a BLE-enabled pacemaker. Has technology gone too far? /s

It sounds like the bluetooth functionality is only there for telemetry.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#122

Post by ampdepolymerase »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #71
hwillis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should not. 60 beats per minute means that in ten years the leads of a pacemaker will be bent *315 million* times. That's an order of magnitude higher than we typically test fatigue resistance, and even if we were that confident about being able to produce flawless materials, there are millions of different enzymes and acids and temperature fluctuations in the body. Any one of those could impact the fatigu…

> EDIT: oh, and heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the US, while heart surgery is one of the most difficult specialties to get in to. They are absolutely never short on patients, lol. This is still relevant to his concern, but from the other end. They might be making the labor artificially scarce to increase pay.

> This is still relevant to his concern, but from the other end. They might be making the labor artificially scarce to increase pay.

This is very much true. I find that a lot of people in tech seem to put healthcare on a pedestal and believe that the professionalisation and gatekeeping of the industry create a better outcome than other engineering fields. This is very much untrue, the healthcare field is in need of massive disruption and lobbying to increase labor supply. You are being downvoted because a lot of tech people here hate to imagine that healthcare at the highest level is still subject to market forces like everything else. Medical training is being severely gatekept and hindered via the current apprenticeship/residency system. After all, we call the worst medical student, doctor. If you want to improve healthcare, tie medical school admission to the MCAT score, and only the MCAT score. You are not going to get better doctors just because candidates spend their summers building houses in some impoverished third world country.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#124

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #71
hwillis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should not. 60 beats per minute means that in ten years the leads of a pacemaker will be bent *315 million* times. That's an order of magnitude higher than we typically test fatigue resistance, and even if we were that confident about being able to produce flawless materials, there are millions of different enzymes and acids and temperature fluctuations in the body. Any one of those could impact the fatigu…

> EDIT: oh, and heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the US, while heart surgery is one of the most difficult specialties to get in to. They are absolutely never short on patients, lol. This is still relevant to his concern, but from the other end. They might be making the labor artificially scarce to increase pay.

More like deliberately increasing demand for the service.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#125

Post by konschubert »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #114
konschubert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this as: Most patients don’t survive those 10 years anyways.

The figures surrounding pacemakers are hard to interpret. Most people are fitted extremely late in their life following serious cardiac incidents. My understanding is that people diagnosed with bradycardia young can expect to survive a long time with the device.

You are right. When you read the studies, they seem gloom. But of course, most people who are fitted a pacemaker are already very late in their life.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#126

Post by konschubert »

kristopolous wrote: post #72
konschubert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this as: Most patients don’t survive those 10 years anyways.

I'd rather live an extra 9 years than 0. We're all going to die and an extra 9 years is not bad.

I did not mean to say that they are not worth it.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#127

Post by melq »

tom_ wrote: post #105
cududa wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolutely arrogance to assume a keyboard switch and a pace maker are anywhere near the same thing…

Indeed, the keyboard switch people have to produce a device that's manufacturable at scale for pennies per unit, and can be fitted in unforgiving environments by the untrained.

How is that comparable to a pacemaker in any way? They aren't made for a similar scale, price, or 'environment', and would only be installed/serviced/dealt with at all by anyone aside from highly trained specialists.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#128

Post by jadt »

mullen wrote: post #108
OJFord wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI there's not really anything to miniaturise beyond the rest of the pacemaker (i.e. ignoring how it's powered) - there's no 'control' or addition of material as in a big nuclear power station, it's 'just' a decaying radioactive material -> heat -> electricity (the inverse of Peltier effect heating, and presumably just as inefficient (~30%?)).

Why not just draw heat from the person and convert it to electricity?

Looks like there has been research done on that topic[1].

[1]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146093/

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#129

Post by samstave »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #98
hwillis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should not. 60 beats per minute means that in ten years the leads of a pacemaker will be bent *315 million* times. That's an order of magnitude higher than we typically test fatigue resistance, and even if we were that confident about being able to produce flawless materials, there are millions of different enzymes and acids and temperature fluctuations in the body. Any one of those could impact the fatigu…

It sounds like you have quite a bit of knowledge on the subject. I had to get a pacemaker a couple years ago, and am an embedded engineer. I hope to live another 50 years at least, so this is an interesting subject for me. Maybe my cardiologist is just trying to make me feel good, but he says my leads will likely last 30-50 years. Intuitively that seems unlikely, but we'll see. It's got to be one of the most engineer…

No post body was provided.

Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers

#130

Post by pixl97 »

nousermane wrote: post #85
hwillis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should not. 60 beats per minute means that in ten years the leads of a pacemaker will be bent *315 million* times. That's an order of magnitude higher than we typically test fatigue resistance, and even if we were that confident about being able to produce flawless materials, there are millions of different enzymes and acids and temperature fluctuations in the body. Any one of those could impact the fatigu…

> 315 million times. That's an order of magnitude higher than we typically test fatigue resistance Nah, it's not that bad. Decent mechanical keyboard switch is specified for 100 million clicks [1, or google for "switch million actuations"]. Surely good engineering can eek out another order of magnitude. Not to mention - pacemaker leads ("wires"), the only part that bends, have way less stress on them (= larger bend r…

You're not counting failure rate over time. How many people actually click a key 100M clicks? What does the bathtub curve look like? What's the failure rates at 1,10,100,200M clicks?

I'm going to assume those failure numbers are far higher than you'd want for something keeping you alive.

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