Reuse of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators: systematic review, meta-analysis and quality assessment of the body of evidence

Design of a syringe extension device (Chloe SED®) for low-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa: a circular economy approach

Underfunded healthcare infrastructures in low-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa have resulted in a lack of medical devices crucial to provide healthcare for all. A representative example of this scenario is medical devices to administer paracervical blocks during gynaecological procedures. Devices needed for this procedure are usually unavailable or expensive. Without these devices, providing paracervical blocks for women in need is impossible resulting in compromising the quality of care for women requiring gynaecological procedures such as loop electrosurgical excision, treatment of miscarriage, or incomplete abortion. In that perspective, interventions that can be integrated into the healthcare system in low-resource settings to provide women needing paracervical blocks remain urgent. Based on a context-specific approach while leveraging circular economy design principles, this research catalogues the development of a new medical device called Chloe SED® that can be used to support the provision of paracervical blocks. Chloe SED®, priced at US$ 1.5 per device when produced in polypropylene, US$ 10 in polyetheretherketone, and US$ 15 in aluminium, is attached to any 10-cc syringe in low-resource settings to provide paracervical blocks. The device is designed for durability, repairability, maintainability, upgradeability, and recyclability to address environmental sustainability issues in the healthcare domain. Achieving the design of Chloe SED® from a context-specific and circular economy approach revealed correlations between the material choice to manufacture the device, the device's initial cost, product durability and reuse cycle, reprocessing method and cost, and environmental impact. These correlations can be seen as interconnected conflicting or divergent trade-offs that need to be continually assessed to deliver a medical device that provides healthcare for all with limited environmental impact. The study findings are intended to be seen as efforts to make available medical devices to support women's access to reproductive health services.

Reimplantation of Implantable Cardiac Devices-An Ethical Controversy?

BACKGROUND

Cardiovascular diseases are an important public health problem, the main cause of death in both men and women, with a continuous increasing prevalence and consequences upon morbidity in economic, physical, and psychological terms.The new technology have made possible the development of innovative devices, which have increased the possibility of therapeutic interventions today, extending the life of the population with cardiovascular pathology, transforming the patient care, and providing a complex, personalized therapeutic approach.

FIELDS OF UNCERTAINTY

The aim of the study was to evaluate from an ethical perspective the need, feasibility, and safety of reusing cardiac pacemakers to revise the legal terms and requirements.In recent years, the problem of accessibility to cardiovascular drugs has been increasingly accompanied by the accessibility to technology, interventional cardiology advancing recently, and becoming an increasingly important standard of care.

DATA SOURCES

A review of the specialized literature was performed in March 2023, using keywords such as implantable cardiac devices, reuse, ethics from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, as well as official documents issued at the international level (World Health Organization).

ETHICS AND THERAPEUTIC ADVANCES

An ethical analysis assesses the extent to which a medical act (PM reimplantation) is covered by the 4 universally accepted principles: nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy (respect for the person), and social justice, the analysis addressing to the risk-benefit ratio based on studies that analyzed the phenomenon over the past 50 years. The ethical analyzed issues start from the fact that although 80% of pacemakers, most of them working perfectly, with a battery life of more than 7 years are buried with their owners, while approximately 3 million patients die annually due to the lack of access to these devices in undeveloped and developing countries.But beyond the ethical issues, legal practice has meant that in many countries, reusing of these devices is prohibited, mostly being single-use devices. Low-income countries continue to accept this practice as the only one economically accessible to them, considering the prohibition of reusing them to be an economic rather than a medical issue.

CONCLUSIONS

Reusing implantable cardiac devices is of great interest because of the costs, being in certain situations, the only possibility that certain people can have access to a therapeutic method that ensures their health recovery and increases their quality of life. But this is not possible without clear procedures, without clear criteria on how sterilization should be performed, how the technique should be performed, without obtaining a truly informed consent, and especially without a proper patient's follow-up.

Longevity and potential reusability of cardiac implantable electronic devices explanted in funeral homes

BACKGROUND

While in high-income countries (HICs) the implantation of cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) is common, in certain low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) access to devices is limited and insufficient to meet the demand. Between 17% and 30% of CIEDs explanted post-mortem in HICs appears to have enough battery life to be reused but devices are not routinely programmed to no pacing output and continue to consume battery after the patient's death. Therefore, we conducted a prospective analysis of CIEDs collected from funeral homes, controlling variables such as the date of explantation and limiting the time until the date of interrogation to 6 months. The objective was to perform an accurate analysis of the reusability of post-mortem explanted CIEDs to assess the possibility of implementing a local effort of CIED reuse in LMICs.

METHODS

A descriptive study of post-mortem explanted CIEDs in funeral homes was conducted. Participating centers stored all devices explanted between December 2020 to December 2021 for collection and interrogation.

RESULTS

The participating centers attended 6472 deaths (28.05% of total deaths registered in the region). Two hundred fourteen CIEDs were collected (90.2% pacemakers and 9.8% defibrillators). Of the 214 collected devices, 100 CIEDs (46.7%) had >4 years or >75% battery remaining, preserved external integrity, and no evidence of malfunction and therefore were considered reusable.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on stablished criteria 46.7% of recovered devices were considered reusable. Therefore, recovery from funeral homes of HICs comprises a potential source of reusable devices for LMICs.

Social determinants of pacemaker reuse among patients and family members in Pakistan

OBJECTIVES

This survey aimed to quantify the opinions of CIED reuse among patients and family members in Pakistan and to identify the social determinants which may predict these views.

METHODS

A questionnaire formulating attitudes toward PPM reuse was administered to patients and family members at cardiology institutes in Pakistan from 1 July 2022 to 30 September 2022. The eligibility criteria (age > 18 years; inline for PPM placement) were taken into account and incomplete responses were excluded from the final analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 9,246 participants recorded their responses, of which 7,152 (78.16%) accepted pre-used PPMs. The lower social class had more PPM reuse acceptance rate than the middle and upper class (92.72% vs. 60.52% vs. 35.38%), respectively. Age ≥ 65 (OR(95%CI): 0.68 (0.41-0.99); P-value = 0.023), male gender (OR(95%CI): 0.55 (0.35-0.72), P-value = 0.016), unemployment (OR(95%CI): 0.47 (0.25-0.64); P-value = 0.007), poor health status (OR(95%CI): 0.72 (0.53-0.92); P-value = 0.041), and lower social class (OR(95%CI): 0.36 (0.28-0.53); P-value = 0.003) were social determinants of PPM reuse acceptance.

CONCLUSION

Patients and their family members endorse the concept of PPM reuse in Pakistan who cannot afford new devices.

Spanish Rhythm Association member´s perspectives on cardiac implantable electronic device reuse in low- and middle-income countries

BACKGROUND

Postmortem explanted cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) from developed countries could provide patients unable to afford new devices in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) a treatment they lack. This study describes the preferences of electrophysiologists and device implanting cardiologists from Spain on the management of explanted CIEDs and opinions and concerns regarding reuse in LMIC.

METHODS

A nationwide self-administered questionnaire was sent to members of the Spanish Rhythm Association (n = 1110), between December 2020 and January 2021.

RESULTS

Forty-two physician responses were obtained (response rate 5%). There was a strong preference to donate explanted devices for reuse in humans (61.9%) or animals (31%). The vast majority of the participants thought device reutilization was safe, ethical, and a reasonable alternative if a new device is not accessible. Moreover, they indicated they would be comfortable asking patients to consider post-mortem donation, and willing to implant post-mortem explanted and resterilized devices if they were unable to obtain new ones. 57.1% of respondents considered it would be beneficial for patients to have a document so they could reflect their wishes regarding device handling after their death. The most mentioned concerns regarding device reuse were malfunction (57.1%) and infection (54.8%).

CONCLUSIONS

The majority of respondents support reusable CIED donation to LMIC. It would be interesting to study the feasibility of a nationwide device reutilization program.

Reuse of cardiac implantable electronic devices in developing countries perspectives: A literature review

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES

Access to cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) is limited in developing countries. Postmortem CIED donation from developed countries to developing countries could be an important resource for those who cannot afford a new one. The objective of this paper was to identify and synthesize the perspectives on the donation of CIEDs for potential reuse in patients without resources living in developing countries.

METHODS

A bibliographic review was carried out in the PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases. The search strategy was limited to articles published in English or Spanish.

RESULTS

Eight publications were analyzed. The main results were grouped into two large frameworks on perceptions, preferences, attitudes and opinions of developed countries and developing countries towards the donation and reuse of CIEDs. Positive perspectives were identified towards the donation of CIEDs for their reuse in the majority of patients with a CIED, relatives, funeral homes and physicians of developed countries, as well as in physicians and potential recipient patients of developing countries.

CONCLUSIONS

This review highlights the positive perspectives on CIED donation from developed countries to patients in need of developing countries among all studied groups. In view of the feasibility of collecting postmortem devices, we advocate studying the feasibility of more local CIED donation initiatives.

Dispositivos de uso único: políticas de regulação de reuso e implicações para a saúde coletiva

RESUMO O reuso de dispositivos médicos de uso único implica segurança em saúde. Este estudo analisa sistemas regulatórios de reuso de produtos médicos de uso único em âmbito internacional. Trata-se de revisão integrativa, com descritores específicos, sem restrição de ano da publicação. A busca dos dados, entre outubro e dezembro de 2017, incluiu 23 estudos. As políticas de reuso desses produtos variam entre países, com normas legitimando essas práticas, como a norte-americana e a alemã, normas restritivas e regulações inexistentes em nível nacional, como no Canadá, no Japão e na Europa. Essas políticas centram-se na regulação pré-comercialização, estruturam-se na classificação dos produtos, com questões relacionadas ao rótulo dos produtos, se multiuso ou de uso único, ponto-chave do dilema desse reuso. Este estudo aponta a necessidade de reestruturação das políticas de reuso de produtos de uso único quanto à classificação desses dispositivos, bem como à adoção de mecanismos para clarificação do rótulo desses produtos. Ressalta os condicionantes internos e externos que envolvem o desenvolvimento das políticas de saúde e o papel do Estado na preservação dos direitos da saúde de seus cidadãos, em detrimento dos grupos de interesses privados e dotados de fortes recursos de poder, como a indústria de produtos médicos.