Combination Device Helps Heart Patients

A pacemaker-defibrillator combination kept more people with heart problems out of the hospital than a defibrillator alone. A study of nearly 2,000 people compared the two-device combination to the single device. Hospitalization rates in the two-device group were 41% lower. That means that for every 100 people in the single device group that went to the hospital, only 59 people in the two-device group went. The study was published in the September 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The Associated Press reported on it the same day.