Surgeons at Kansas University Hospital implant a nonsurgical leadless pacemaker last month.

The nonsurgical leadless pacemaker being implanted at Kansas University Hospital.

Kansas University Hospital recently began implanting nonsurgical pacemakers that experts say cut down on procedure and recovery time, leave patients without visible scars or lumps, and reduce the risk of infection.

“This truly … is a paradigm shift in our ability to pace the heart in a much better way than what we’ve done in the past five to six decades,” said Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, the electrophysiologist at KU Hospital who implanted the first device in June as part of a clinical trial.

KU Hospital is the first hospital in the region, and one of only about 50 in the United States and Canada, to offer the procedure, which is for people whose heart rate is too slow.

The devices, which are about one-tenth the size of regular pacemakers, are implanted through a vein in the leg then, with a steerable catheter, screwed directly into the heart.

The procedure takes about half as long as implanting a traditional pacemaker, while the recovery process is about two days compared to one or two weeks. More importantly, Lakkireddy said, the devices have the potential to significantly cut down on pacemaker-related infections.

And with traditional pacemakers, there is wear and tear on the wires, or leads, which eventually need to be replaced. The new devices don’t contain leads.

For now, the technology is limited to single-chamber pacemakers, which make up about a quarter of pacemaker patients. But Lakkireddy believes that devices covering multiple chambers, as well as leadless cardiac defibrillators, are only a matter of a few years away.

The price of the higher-tech devices is slighter more than the traditional ones, but Lakkireddy thinks the savings will happen in the long run. “If you can minimize the rates of infection, rehospitalization, repeat procedures for lead extractions and the number of days of work lost in the process, I think this is a definite winner, all in all,” he said.