Pacemaker Surgery Resumes Amid Pandemic

With all but emergency surgeries prohibited in Bolivia during the worst months of the COVID-19 outbreak, our Heart Surgery Program was unable to implant pacemakers for new patients between March and late-August. We are grateful to report that our partner cardiologists and hospitals now have the testing capacity, personal protection equipment, and basic surgical supplies needed to resume implant surgeries. In the past three weeks, our Bolivian partners, Dr. Benjo Gareca in Cochabamba and Dr. Ronald Cuellar in Santa Cruz, have implanted six pacemakers for three men and three women ranging in age from 16 to 69. Amid so much death and suffering in Bolivia, these six lives saved—and six families kept whole—bring us great joy and hope.

Patients sit six feet apart while waiting for their check-ups at the pacemaker clinic at the Santa Cruz office of Puente de Solidaridad.

Despite the postponement of surgeries, our program remained active during these long months. Social workers from Puente de Solidaridad maintained contact with patients throughout the quarantine and in July, our pacemaker control clinics re-opened to provide regular monitoring. Solidarity Bridge and Puente de Solidaridad are committed to maintaining lifelong access to follow-up care for each patient who receives a cardiac implant through our program. This care is provided at our pacemaker clinics in Santa Cruz and Cochabamba.  There, doctors and technicians use programmers to evaluate and when necessary adjust the timing of the stimulation provided by the pacemaker. This  properly coordinates the pumping action of the patient’s heart chambers. Check-ups can also detect if one of the pacemaker leads has dislodged. The leads are the cables that carry the pulse from the battery to the heart chamber, and they are more prone to slip out of place in hearts ravaged by chronic Chagas disease, an illness endemic to Bolivia. Although rare, surgery may be needed to restore the lead.

Wearing a mask, a patient undergoes routine monitoring of their pacemaker

Periodic pacemaker monitoring is also necessary to evaluate the battery, which has a lifespan between six and ten years. With an average age of 57 (compared to 75 for pacemaker recipients in the US), we know that our patients have long lives ahead of them and may eventually need battery replacements. Puente de Solidaridad social workers maintain close relationships with implant recipients, and often help them to set up savings plans so they are prepared to cover their portion of the cost of battery replacement in the future. This helps us to both keep our long-term commitment to past patients and continue to serve new patients. 

THANK YOU to the Puente de Solidaridad staff and our Bolivian medical partners who have taken all the necessary safety steps to resume and maintain care for these patients in the most difficult of circumstances. Thank you also to our corporate donors, Boston Scientific and Medtronic, for the donated pacemakers and leads that make this life-saving work possible.