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Jack Margolis, MD
Big Spring, Tex

JAMA. 1970;213(9):1498.

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

To the Editor.—

The problem of pacemakers as I see it is that they are probably being used in many situations where their use is not necessary. The intent of my article was to bring this fact to the attention of the medical profession. In many centers, a diagnosis of complete heart-block means pacemaker implantation. Although I have not seen Dr. Parsonnet's cases reported, I would assume that the 1,000 cases Dr. Parsonnet writes about would probably indicate that almost every patient admitted to his hospital with a diagnosis of complete heart-block would receive a pacemaker. It is precisely against this pacemaker usage that I have written this article. While Dr. Parsonnet only reports a 2% mortality in his series, I see no mention of complications, of which there are many. Admittedly, I have reported only 15 cases over a tenyear period, but this was all the patients with a . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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