VIJAYAWADA : The implantation of pacemakers and defibrillators - the modern medical devices that help a heart function normally - will be done free of cost on some poor patients at the NRI Heart Centre and Research Institute, Chinakakani on September 16 and 17.

This will be done as part of a two-day live workshop on implantable defibrillators and heart failure device therapy for about 250 physicians and cardiologists.

Select patients

The workshop, which is being organised at the NRI General Hospital and Medical College, is called `Implantable Cardioveter Defibrillator, Pacemaker and Cardiac Resynchronisation Therapy - 2006', or in short IMPACT-2006.

Ravi Yarlagadda, an interventional electro-physiologist at Hartford Hospital, Connecticut (USA), a native of Vijayawada who took his MBBS degree from the Guntur Medical College, will be operating upon select patients and implant these devices free of cost. Dr. Ravi said at a press conference on Wednesday that the devices, which would be worth Rs.30 lakhs, had been sponsored by a Canadian firm which manufactured them. A pacemaker, worth about Rs.75,000, had already been implanted in a patient on Tuesday on the occasion of Independence Day. Head of the department of cardiology of NRI institute K. Gopala Krishna and NRI Academy of Sciences director Jitendra Katneni were present.

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