Pager device alerts man of heart attack

NEWPORT NEWS, Va (WAVY) - More than one million heart attacks happen every year in the United States. In Virginia, more than 19,000 died from heart disease in 2008. The quicker someone gets medical attention the better their chance of survival.

A new early warning system can detect a heart attack before it happens. It looks like a pager, and it probably saved a Gloucester man's life.

Before he even knew there was a problem, Bob Focht got a page to go to the emergency room. The four-time heart attack survivor, was just sitting down to dinner when it happened.

"I had no pain, no nothing. The machine did real good for me," he said.

The machine is the AngelMed Guardian, implanted in the Gloucester grandfather's chest just one week prior.

Dr. Paul Micale, a cardiologist at Riverside Regional Medical Center , explained how it works. He said it works like an electrocardiogram, or an EKG, on the inside.

With AngelMed, a wire surrounds the heart and constantly monitors its electrical activity. An antenna sends a signal to a pager the patient carries, which goes off when there's a change.

After Focht's pager went off, "They got me over there [the emergency room] and took me straight over to the cath lab and sure enough I had a vessel in there that had burst open, and it was clotting and it was 80 percent clotted, from what I understand."

Then, Dr. Micale said, " I was able to balloon that open and put a medicated stint in to treat that and hopefully prevent any troubles going forward."

Focht is one of five heart patients to receive the implant at Riverside since August, as part of a nationwide clinical trial.

Because it is a trial, Focht didn't know if his device would be turned on right away. He is grateful it was.

"It saved my life, I'm sure of that."

The clinical trial runs another two years, then the FDA approval process begins, so it will be at least three years before it could be available in the United States.

The device is already available in Brazil and will be in Europe by the end of the year.