Diagnosed several years earlier with a minor heart murmur and an inflammation of the sac that encloses the heart, Ben had never experienced any symptoms of his congenital heart rhythm problem until that night. Heart rhythm disorders, or arrhythmias, occur when the heart beats too quickly, too slowly or in a chaotic manner. These disorders, which affect two million Americans¹, are caused by electrical problems in the heart and result in fatigue, fainting, dizziness and even sudden death.

In addition, five million Americans suffer from congestive heart failure, which causes the main chambers of the heart to pump inefficiently and can cause the heart to beat in an unsynchronized manner, also referred to as ventricular fibrillation. The vast majority of the 335,000 sudden cardiac deaths that occur in the United States every year are believed to be caused by ventricular fibrillation.¹ Heart failure is the main cause of hospital stays in the United States and will result in an estimated $30 billion in costs in 2006.¹

A few days after he was stabilized, Ben was fitted with an implantable cardiac defibrillator, or ICD. ICDs detect and correct often deadly erratic heartbeats by delivering an electrical shock to the heart. Ben was one of the early beneficiaries of an ICD. At the time, the device was larger than a deck of cards, implanted in his abdomen and connected to his heart with wires. Implanting the device required open-heart surgery and meant that Ben had to remain in the hospital for an extended period of time.

Ben’s original device had a limited battery life. As a result, he had to undergo three more surgeries to implant new ICDs over the next several years. After his initial surgery in 1989, Ben had four more cardiac arrest episodes that activated his ICD. In two of those cases, he lost consciousness, but he was always brought back to life, literally, by his ICD. He’s now on his fourth ICD, which is a third of the size of his original one, with an eight-year projected battery life. His latest ICD was implanted with only a small incision under his collarbone, and he was out of the hospital and resuming his normal activity within days.

The latest generation of ICDs is about 99 percent effective in stopping life-threatening arrhythmias.² When implanted, these devices can prevent sudden cardiac death and reduce patient mortality rates to 20 percent – compared with the 60 percent chance of mortality associated with drug therapy. Without an ICD, a person's chance of surviving this type of cardiac episode is less than 5 percent.

ICDs—Saving Lives and Improving Doctor and Hospital Efficiency

ICDs have also improved over time and now enable physicians to monitor patients remotely as well as providing other cardiac treatments such as cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), which automatically re-coordinates the action of the right and left ventricles. Recent data⁷ show that lifetime treatment with CRT therapy is highly cost-effective.

Ben credits ICDs with changing his life and giving him the opportunity to continue doing what he loves, including spending time with his family, running his busy Washington, D.C. public affairs consulting practice and riding horses on his family farm. “ICDs have literally saved my life not once, but several times,” said Ben. “I have been given 16 years of life that, had this happened 25 years ago, I never would have had. It’s critically important to encourage research into new and better technologies like this.”