Teletronics promotes Meta MV for use in children - Teletronics Pacing Systems Inc

Health Industry Today, June, 1991

Telectronics Pacing Systems Inc., Englewood, Colo., is promoting its Meta MV rate responsive pacing system for use in children with various types of heart disease.

The pediatric market currently represents between 5% and 7% of Meta MV implants, said Bob Musmanno, vice president of marketing. The pacing system has been on the market for about two years and implanted in more than 25,000 adults worldwide. It received Food and Drug Administration clearance in April 1989.

The pacing system is sold by direct sales (about 127 reps in the United States). It is the most widely implanted physiologic sensor in the world and is the only true pphysiologic sensor on the market, according to Musmanno.

"All other sensors on the market measure activity. They are not physiological," he said.

Medtronic, Minneapolis; Siemens-Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, Calif.; and Intermedics Inc., Angelton, Texas, have been trying to develop a physiologic sensor, Musmanno said. All three companies have rate responsive pacers on the market.

Telectronics target customers are the cardiologist, electrophysiologist and thoracic cardiovascular surgeon. The company holds seminars on all of is pacemakers, he said.

Trade shows the company attends include those of the American Heart Assn., American College of Cardiology and North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology.

As a value-added service, Telectronics offers the Meta-Promise: If the physician believes that the pacing system did not meet certain results, the company credits the hospital the difference between the cost of the Meta MV and the cost of the standard pacer the purchaser normally uses.

Competing products are pacing systems that utilize piezoelectric crystal sensors, which measure muscular movement, according to Musmanno. In contrast, the Meta MV is based on minute ventilation, a combination of the user's respiration rate and tidal volume. This enables the pacing system to provide increases in the pacing rate during exercise an appropriate.

"Because it deals with frequency and depth of breath, whenever the user starts to walk, for example, the pacemaker will pace the patient appropriately," he said.

The system works on standard leads, he added.

Candidates for Meta MV implants must have a bradycardia condition (too slow of a heartbeat).

Steven Yabek, M.D., University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, has pioneered the use of the META MV in 11 children, ages 6-19. "Children who receive this type of metabolic pacemaker can run, skateboard and ski; they don't have to sit on the sidelines, but can participate in activities with their peers," he said.

In the past, papcemakers that kept the heartbeat at a single, steady rate were limiting for active children, the company said. Any kind of exercise beyond walking, emotional excitement or stress caused breathlessness, dizziness and often, fainting.

About 1.5 million American children (newborn to 18 years old) have various types of heart disease, according to Telectronics. The American Heart Assn. estimates that 25,000 babies are born each year with heart defects.