Wearable defibrillator prescribed for cardiac patients awaiting treatment

PHOENIX (Aging Untold) — A growing number of cardiologists in Arizona are prescribing a wearable heart monitor and defibrillator for their patients with heart problems.

A LifeVest can be worn around the clock. The device is intended to apply an electrical shock if someone has a cardiac crisis.

Isy Sonabend, a 72-year-old grandfather from Phoenix, said the LifeVest saved his life.

Device activated during cardiac arrest

When Sonabend was released from the hospital after having a heart attack, doctors told him he was still at risk, so they gave him a LifeVest to take home and wear.

A couple of days later, the LifeVest alert went off in the middle of the night.

“If it senses that your heart is going into some distress, it will discharge, and that’s what happened,” Sonabend said.

He had gone into cardiac arrest.

His wife, Benita Sonabend, said the LifeVest shocked her husband’s heart without waiting for paramedics to arrive, saving valuable minutes.

“When somebody has a heart attack and their heart needs to be shocked, that takes time. This was immediate,” she said. “We could have lost him in that time that it would take, whether it was for rescue to come here or from the nurse’s station in the ICU into his room.”

Growing use among cardiologists

Dr. Peter Weiss, a cardiac electrophysiologist at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix, said a growing number of cardiologists are prescribing LifeVests for patients who are in the middle of treatment or waiting for another procedure.

“It served its purpose perfectly in providing a bridge between the initial event that damaged his heart muscle, and then more definitive therapy that turns out he very much did need, and he really would have never gotten because he would have actually likely died in his bed that night,” Weiss said.

The company that makes the LifeVest claims the vest is saving three patients every day across the country.

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