More Heart Treatment Gets Cheney Back on the Job
July 2, 2001 (Washington) -- In what his spokeswoman described as a "typical day," Vice President Dick Cheney was back at work Monday morning just 48 hours after receiving a high-tech pacemaker-defibrillator.
Considering that this was Cheney's third hospitalization for heart for disease since last November's election, some might consider his rapid recovery surprising. But not Douglas Zipes, MD, president of the American College of Cardiology and a specialist in implantable cardioveter defibrillators, or ICDs.
"I expected him to do that. That's the way our patients do. That's the wonderful thing about the device," Zipes tells WebMD. He says the ICD is ideal for patients like Cheney, whose struggle with heart problems extends over a 25-year period and includes quadruple-bypass surgery.
Now Zipes says Cheney's risk of sudden death has been reduced to about 1%.
"Some of these patients have had a life-threatening heart rhythm problem with black-out spells, or even cardiac arrest from which they've been resuscitated. So the spectrum is a very broad one. The common denominator, of course, is a life-threatening heart rhythm problem," says Zipes.
Even though 100,000 people worldwide get ICDs every year, Zipes believes many more could be saved by the devices. It's estimated that 250,000 Americans die annually from sudden cardiac death in the U.S., but perhaps half that number may not have a clue their lives are in jeopardy until it's too late.
Robert Sorrentino, MD, director of the clinical pacemaker program at Duke University Medical Center, believes Cheney's successful implant and return to work will encourage more Americans to undergo the procedure.
"I think for this population it's an underserved therapy ... I think something like this with Mr. Cheney is going to open up a lot of doctors' and patients' eyes, and I think we're going to get a lot more referrals for this evaluation," Sorrentino, tells WebMD. He has done hundreds of the procedures and says they're effective at preventing future problems, but they are not perfect.
"Statistics would say that he [Cheney] is at risk for something happening in the next 5 to 10 years, but could this event happen next week? Possibly," says Sorentino.