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Brian Vastag

JAMA. 2002;288:1838.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Implanted heart defibrillators added a year to the lives of people with irregular heart rhythms, concludes an 8-year study funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The devices sense abnormal heartbeats and shock the heart back to a steady pace.

Investigators tracked mortality and health care costs in a nationwide sample of 7600 elderly Medicare patients, matched according to illness severity and prognosis. Half received a defibrillator and half received usual medical care. Significantly fewer of the defibrillator group had died at 1 year (11% vs 19%), 2 years (20% vs 30%), and 3 years (28% vs 39%). The defibrillator advantage declined during the last 5 years of the study, but overall median survival time for the defibrillator group was longer (5.7 vs 4.6 years). Conducted by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine, the study also reported that implanted defibrillators cost more than usual care . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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