Pacemaker for bowel control

bowel control. If you’re interested in a bowel pacemaker, contact our Reno bariatric surgery facility to learn more. Pacemakers have been around for decades, predominately regulating the heart rhythms. Pacemakers have been life-saving in this regard, keeping the heart productively beating, even when the body’s natural innervation to the muscles has deteriorated over time. The pacemaker procedure involves implanting a small generator under the skin with tiny leads or wires that connect to the important nerve conduction areas of the heart. The battery has to be replaced periodically with a minor procedure every few years. The same concept works for bowel control. In the case of millions of individuals, the nerves signaling the important sphincter muscles have deteriorated over time, mostly as a result of childbirth (although radiation, surgery, diseases, and age can do it). The muscles themselves often function properly, but the signaling for control of them is faulty because of deterioration of the nerves. Implanting a small generator under the skin with tiny leads traveling to the areas that need innervation allows a restored function of the muscles, and returns peace of mind – and control of the bowels – to the person who has been suffering with leakage or accidents. For someone undergoing a procedure, the improvement is usually immediate. The outpatient procedure lasts about 45 minutes and the person can recover quickly at home with a small 2 inch incision over the new implanted pacemaker in the region of the hip or gluteal muscle, in the” back pocket” area. The battery life is around five years, and the small implant is not noticeable under the skin. Just like cardiac pacemakers, it can be adjusted or programmed when a technician holds a controller device over the skin and presses a few buttons. It’s no wonder that the engineers who have solved this problem for bowel control come from the same company that has been so successful and innovative with cardiac pacemakers, Medtronic. With the Inter-Stim device, a person undergoes a minor outpatient procedure during which the leads are carefully placed in the spinal region of S 3, which is precisely the pathway for signaling to the bowel sphincters. Incidentally, this is the same pathway for controlling the bladder sphincters, which explains why there is so much improvement in both bowel and bladder control after the pacemaker is implanted. The new bowel control pacemaker is the most effective and helpful innovation in this field in decades. A far less invasive approach than surgery, the pacemaker for bowel control is proving highly effective for this vexing problem. Kent Sasse, M.D., MPH, FACS, FACRS > Minimally Invasive Solutions]]>