Carl Boyton describes how his condition affects his life and how lead management has improved his mobility and future outcome. Dr. Harish Manyam explains the procedure used to help Carl.
D051424-01
Yeah, My condition really probably as far as emotionally affected me more as a child. I come from a sports family. My brother and my sister and my father played at the University of Tennessee in the 60s and actually Played a year or two in the NFL. And you know as a child, I was not allowed to play football. And it is kind of difficult, you know, when your dad played college football and a short time in the NFL and you can even play for the youth league football. And so that was difficult to understand as a child. My condition was first initially diagnosed when I was 14 months old. My mother took me to the doctor for a cold respiratory type thing and they noticed the extremely slow heart rate. They told me as a child I would eventually need a pacemaker. I was 24 years old. You know, I remember having a conversation with the doctor, I feel fine. You know, why do you think I need a face maker In his response and I never will forget this. His response is you don't know what it's like to feel fine. My body and had just become accustomed to it. And when he made that statement, it kind of hit home in 2006, I fractured my first lead. That was a ventricle lead at that point in time. It was more dangerous to remove the lead than to replace it. So they left that lead in there. So now I have four leads to working leads to non working leads in my chest at this time. And that's the first time I met dr manion. He had the ability and the technology here at our linger to remove the existing leads. Four leads, all being there were quite concerning to me. But in addition to that, the length of time the leads have been there greater than 20 years. Put him at a significant risk of number one undergoing this procedure. # two is being really successful at getting these wires out of the way and putting new wires in its place. And so what we talked to Carl about is a laser extraction. The technology with the laser really enables to get this tissue off and enables us to get the procedure done safely, efficacious lee and take care of the patient at the end of the day. The really huge accomplishment that we made at the end of the procedure is that we were able to take care of all over the wires that were in there and actually put a completely new system in and make him completely MRI safe. And as a 46 year old man going forward, he'll be able to get an MRI whenever he needs, technology can be a wonderful thing. I am 100% Pacer dependent. I do have an underlying, but it is very slow, high risk. But you know, I don't necessarily have that fear of the leads breaking the way it's affected me the most. I have zero restrictions right now, which is great. And I'd like to thank my family. You know, they've all helped me any time I've needed something post surgery is really want to thank them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm.
