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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Adam Boas had a heart attack, or so they tell him. Grounding Pad Surgery
"I remember getting ready for work that day and that's about it," said Boas.
Boas said he was headed to work, his wife was driving, when suddenly he just wasn't there anymore.
Boas had gone into cardiac arrest at age 37. He woke up in the hospital where doctors told him he'd had a heart attack.
"Not what you expect," he said. "Just wake up in a hospital and be told, you know, cardiac arrest."
Doctors told Boas his heart was actually fine. It had no genetic defects and nothing was seriously wrong with it. The heart attack had just happened, and it could happen again.
So Dr. Thomas Mattioni with HonorHealth Research Institute gave Boas a proposal: get a pacemaker.
Not just any pacemaker, but one that was also a defibrillator. The pacemaker was wireless and would be injected into the heart through a vein in his leg.
“It's a tiny little bullet sized in a self-contained unit that has no wires," Mattioni said.
The pacemaker was also experimental.
"The novel part is this communication system between the two devices that really hasn't been done before.”
Of course, pacemakers and defibrillators have been implanted for years and are far from experimental. Mattioni said there was relatively little to be concerned about when it comes to function.
What makes this unit different is that the pacemaker and the defibrillator "talk" to each other. A defibrillator gives a bigger shock to the heart than a pacemaker. The two devices coordinate to decide which shock Boas's heart needs.
While the "experimental" label was a bit concerning, Boas said using himself as a test subject could help others down the road.
"If you have the opportunity to do something that could be helpful to people in the future," he said, "you should probably take that opportunity and do it."
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