Temporary Passengers

Illustrations by Reiner Riedler/Anzenberger/redux from the project the lifesaving machines

Advances in pacemaker technology are making the devices safer, smaller and longer-lived.

ART
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The Examination of a Poem
How can literature serve medicine? An interview with the first “writer-in-residence” at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Facial Feminization
Photographer Elle Pérez documents the intimate lives of those in the LGBTQ community.

Anatomy of a Hashtag
Public health messaging online yields beautiful—but sometimes worrying—data.
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HEART
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Prescription: A Happy Heart
Positive psychology may be the next logical tool for cardiology, according to psychiatrist Jeff C. Huffman.

One Thing Leads to the Next
Robert Lefkowitz is best known for revealing the mechanism behind hundreds of drugs in use today. But he thinks of himself as a storyteller first and has a new book out to make his case.

Broken Hearted
An unusual syndrome connects grief and stress to cardiac damage. Discoveries about its physiology reveal a complex connection to the brain.
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PACEMAKER
TECHNOLOGY
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The 100-Day Vaccine
COVID vaccines happened in record time. Could the next be even more rapid?

From Genome to Pangenome
The reference genome is bracing for its next leap forward. Geneticist Ting Wang wants the process to embrace both science and social equity.

Research Has a “Trash Island.” Some Are Trying to Clean it Up.
Computer-generated nonsense studies and other fake papers find their way into the scientific literature all too often. A few crusading researchers are fighting back.
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Published On October 3, 2015

THE FIRST FULLY INTERNAL CARDIAC PACEMAKER was implanted in 1958 to correct a case of cardiac arrhythmia. It failed just eight hours later. The Swedish engineer who received it would go through 25 pacemakers in the next 43 years of his life. Pacemakers are still temporary passengers, as are their technological relatives, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), which jump-start the heart with more powerful pulses during sudden cardiac arrest. Reiner Riedler photographed this pile of those devices as part of a portrait series on lifesaving machines. But new advances are ensuring their stay is less invasive and longer-lived. In August 2015, researchers published encouraging preliminary results for a small “leadless” (wireless) pacemaker that is implanted using a catheter threaded through the leg, and placed within the heart itself. With a battery life of about nine years, it has been approved in Europe and is awaiting approval by the FDA.

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