> It's not like a visit to the dentist either, it's a major surgery.
My father had a pacemaker, and for long enough to receive a battery swap. The battery for that particular model was implanted under his shoulder blade; the swap-out was performed under local anaesthetic.
The original implantation was a bit more complex from a surgical perspective, requiring keyhole surgery and an angioplasty to run the wire around his heart as well as to implant the battery and controller. But the point is: these devices can be installed and expected to perform for decades, so the engineering design is of necessity highly conservative and has long-term maintenance in mind. It's also safety-critical: if the device malfunctions, people can die.
PS: a pacemaker is not an implanted defibrillator. (Also, my father died in 2017, so what I'm describing is probably a decade or two behind the state of the art.)
My father had a pacemaker, and for long enough to receive a battery swap. The battery for that particular model was implanted under his shoulder blade; the swap-out was performed under local anaesthetic.
The original implantation was a bit more complex from a surgical perspective, requiring keyhole surgery and an angioplasty to run the wire around his heart as well as to implant the battery and controller. But the point is: these devices can be installed and expected to perform for decades, so the engineering design is of necessity highly conservative and has long-term maintenance in mind. It's also safety-critical: if the device malfunctions, people can die.
PS: a pacemaker is not an implanted defibrillator. (Also, my father died in 2017, so what I'm describing is probably a decade or two behind the state of the art.)