Agreeing to have a medical device implanted into your body is a serious decision. You and your physicians need to determine whether the risks of surgery and its side effects or complications are worth the benefits you will receive. For patients with serious heart arrhythmias, the decision to have an implanted defibrillator is one that can be life-altering. These devices rapidly detect a cardiac arrest and shock the heart into beating again. Thus, they can truly be life-saving for a patient. To understand how these devices are implanted, what they do, and what risks and limitations follow such surgery, Read Here.

One dilemma that’s likely not raised at the time of surgery, but is becoming a big problem as more people grow old with implanted defibrillators, has to do with whether to it’s ever acceptable to de-activate these devices, especially in patients who are at the end of their lives or who have a poor quality of life. When the device is activated, the shock to the heart can be painful. And it can also shock a heart back into beating in patients whose lives may be drawing to a close. Determining whether such a device should ever be turned off is truly an ethical dilemma, requiring the input of the patient if at all possible, or surrogate decision makers if they are in place. Ideally, this is an issue that should be discussed with a patient and family well before the need to consider such a difficult decision arises. To learn more about this decision-making challenge, Read Here. And one more challenge when it comes to implanted defibrillators, or more generally, any wireless device embedded within your body: such devices may be prone to hacking, leaving patients vulnerable to a previously unimaginable security nightmare. Welcome to life in the 21st century.