Health City Cayman Islands Introduces Leadless Pacemakers for Heart Patients

CAYMAN ISLANDS – Health City Cayman Islands is offering a cutting-edge solution for patients with slow heartbeats. The facility has the capability to insert leadless pacemakers, which transmit electrical pulses to the heart without insulated wires.

ravikDr. Ravi Kishore Amancharla“The leadless pacemaker, which is 90 percent smaller than a transvenous pacemaker, is a self-contained generator and electrode system implanted directly into the heart,” explained Dr. Ravi Kishore Amancharla, Chief Interventional Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist at Health City Cayman Islands.

The leadless device is inserted via a vein in the groin using a transcatheter approach, eliminating several complications associated with transvenous pacemakers. However, leadless pacemakers, which have shown both safety and efficacy and are compatible with magnetic resonance imaging, are not recommended for patients with certain forms of heart block or sinus node dysfunction.

Apart from offering leadless pacemakers, the tertiary care facility also provides lead extraction procedures for patients whose transvenous pacemakers malfunction or become infected. This complicated process involves navigating tough scar tissue that holds the leads in place.

Health City Cayman Islands also offers Cardiac Contractility Modulation, a pioneering procedure that produces long-term benefits in the pumping function of the heart for patients with heart failure.

Dr. Kishore Amancharla has successfully established one of the best cardiology and electrophysiology units in the Caribbean, with close to 3,000 interventional adult cardiac procedures performed in the Cayman Islands to date.

He has also been responsible for introducing angioplasty and radiofrequency ablation services and other interventional procedures such as transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVR), cryoablation for atrial fibrillation, left atrial appendage closure, and renal denervation therapy for hypertension in the Cayman Islands.