A heart stabilizer, typically used for off-pump coronary artery bypass, can be effectively utilized to obtain an operative field during myocardial electrode implantation via a subxiphoid approach.
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May aid subxiphoid lead placement in select cases; hypothesis-generating and should not change practice without further evidence.
During implantation of a pacemaker into a 15-year-old male (height: 155 cm, weight: 65 kg) suffering from complete atrioventricular block, it was difficult to exteriorize the myocardium by approaching from below the xiphoid process so an operative field was obtained by using a heart stabilizer. A myocardial electrode was fixed after confirming stable circulatory dynamics with no arrhythmia and good R wave amplitude and pacing thresholds. As the heart stabilizer is now a vital device for off-pump coronary artery bypass (OPCAB), we consider that it will also become a useful device for procedures other than OPCAB in the field of cardiac surgery.
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Fujii et al. (2005) studied this question.
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