Surveillance of pacemaker patients by an automatic pacemaker function analyzer.

An external, simply operated, fail-safe, automatic pacemaker function analyzer (PFA) has been designed for routine examination of ambulatory patients in local medical clinics and for continual surveillance of hospitalized patients in cardiology units. The instrument provides a comprehensive test of the pacing system, including the battery, pulse generator, and electrodes (leads), during varying heart activity. In the recorded ECG from 92 pacemaker patients, the PFA recognized all but 0.29% of the QRS complexes and 0.21% of the pacing artifacts; no signals were incorrectly attributed to the QRS complex. With the PFA, 1171 pacemaker tests were performed on these patients. In all cases, the PFA judged the performance of the tested pacemakers in accordance with the predetermined criteria. The PFA can be integrated into a pacemaker-patient surveillance system within a general-purpose cardiac care unit.