Wearable defibrillator can bridge the gap to implanted device

[Star Tribune, November 17, 2013]

“I didn’t even feel the shock,” Scott Olson said. “I just heard my granddaughter calling my name.” Olson, 55, had been prescribed the wearable defibrillator only three weeks earlier by Dr. Raed Abdelhadi, an electrophysiologist at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

The LifeVest, manufactured in Pittsburgh by ZOLL Medical Corp., has been on the market since 2001, when it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It’s meant for people whose hearts are at risk for sudden cardiac arrest but who for one reason or another have not been given an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). Read the rest of the story at startribune.com.