In another move to provide more services to patients close to home, heart doctors are now installing artificial pacemakers at Coosa Valley Medical Center.Dr. John D. McBrayer of Heart South Cardiovascular Group installed the first pacemaker in a patient recently at the hospital.
Cardiovascular Associates is also doing pacemakers for patients locally, said Andy Gill, director of the Imaging Department for the hospital.
Heart South also does heart procedures at Shelby Medical Center and Brookwood, while Cardiovascular does procedures at Brookwood and Trinity.
McBrayer said he did his first pacemaker for a patient at CVMC two months ago. He said a lot of preparation was needed prior to doing the procedure. He was the first heart doctor to place a pacemaker in a patient at Coosa Valley.
His second pacemaker was done on a patient already in the hospital.
Both went well, he said. “Now we are able to offer the service to patients locally,” he said.
In explaining about pacemakers, McBrayer said for a normal heartbeat, your body utilizes a natural ‘pacemaker’ to generate electrical impulses in a specialized area of the heart that travel down specific pathways and stimulate the cardiac muscle to contract. If this natural electrical impulse malfunctions, your doctor may elect to use an artificial electronic device called a pacemaker to stimulate the heart.
Pacemakers may stimulate the upper chambers of the heart or both the upper and lower chambers. Some pacemakers are also built with an internal device, called a defibrillator, which can shock the heart back into a regular rhythm if it stops.
A variety of conditions may call for pacing. Most often, pacemakers are used to correct an abnormally slow heartbeat by sending electrical impulses to one or more chambers of the heart.
Artificial pacemakers may be either permanent or temporary. A permanent pacemaker is implanted into a patient’s chest during a minor surgical procedure that may require a short stay in the hospital.
Once in place, the pacemaker operates on batteries which last for about five to 10 years.
McBrayer said pacemaker batteries will not run out unexpectedly. The doctor can determine when the battery is running low during a routine office visit.
Some 200,000 pacemakers are implanted each year in patients in the United States.
The doctor said there is a growing need for pacemakers as the population in this country ages. Pacemakers are implanted mostly in the elderly.
“We are seeing more and more pacemakers put in,” he said.
No major equipment is needed for the procedure, he said. There was just no one at the hospital in Sylacauga experienced in helping install the pacemakers. Training, he said has been provided.
Gill said nurses and technicians are trained now to do the pacemakers with the heart doctors.
The company that makes the pacemakers used by McBrayer provided training to hospital employees.
He said patients who want to stay close to home can now request the procedure be done at Coosa Valley.
“There is no reason not to do it here. I think more and more people will decide to have the procedure done here. It is so much easier on the patient and family if you can do it close to home,” McBrayer said.
The pacemaker procedure takes from one to two hours and requires a 23-hour observation in the hospital.
“We always want to make sure everything is okay. That’s why we do the 23-hour hospital stay. Then all the patient needs to do is follow up at our clinic here,” McBrayer said.
The doctor said Sylacauga’s new state-of-the-art hospital is such a plus for the community.
He said when it comes to doing pacemakers for patients, the patient’s primary care doctor consults with the heart doctors first. “Then we see the patient and decide if he or she needs the pacemaker,” he said.
McBrayer has been implanting pacemakers for 18 years.
A technical support person from the pacemaker company is on hand, along with other healthcare workers, for the procedure.
Gill worked with McBrayer at Shelby Medical in the heart cath lab prior to coming to Coosa Valley Medical Center.
McBrayer said the hospital has an imaging department that is top of the line when it comes to the nuclear medicine machine, Echo Cardiogram and a 64-slice CT machine.
Glenn Sisk, chief executive officer for Coosa Valley Medical Center, said pacemaker placement represents another service offered in the community that will allow people to remain close to home for care.
“Our physician partners are working closely with our team to ensure that quality outcomes complemented by guest excellence remain our greatest priorities,” Sisk said.
Originally from Columbus, Miss., McBrayer received his medical degree from the University of Mississippi and completed residency training at UAB. He completed a fellowship program in cardiovascular disease from the University of Tennessee in Memphis. He is board certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease and boarded in interventional cardiology.
