Smallest Pacemaker Is the Size of a Rice Grain

Does anyone know how something like this is injected? It has to be close to the heart so it’s probably not going into the bloodstream. And you can’t really inject something precisely into the heart itself while it is pumping, right? And do you just aim by hand or is there some apparatus that does the alignment so you hit a specific location and depth?

I know basically nothing about this area so take all this with a large grain of salt (or rice), but my understanding is they can go through the femoral or brachial vein to inject things directly into the heart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripherally_inserted_central_...

I don’t know how exactly this one will be done specifically but I have a (much larger) passive implant that was inserted via a catheter in a vein in my leg and guided up to my atrium, with an endoscope down my throat to see it as it was positioned. My atrial septal defect occluder was not only precisely positioned inside my heart but unwrapped from a shape that can fit down a vein to a stacked flat disc shape that clamps on two side of the heart wall to hold itself in place.

This technique is being expanded to robotic catheters that can carry out the precise surgery automatically and there are the simpler “deployable stabilization devices” that are used to stabilize the heart muscle. If this is really small enough to be injected, it should work with either of those methods rather noninvasively.

Mine was done under sedation and inserted under my pec (for protection as I lift a lot) with the wires fed into my heart (I assume).

They mention the use case of temporary pacing after surgery (specifically children where the desolving of the device is a great feature that leaves less abandoned litter behind as the grow).

I imagine if it's useful for adults, something that small will probably be put in using a catheter (similar to how stents often are placed).

A cardiac electrophysiologist advances a catheter into the right ventricle and then deploys this directly onto the heart muscle. This is only a little bit smaller than existing leadless pacemakers which are in wide use.