"The waitress had just given us our menu. "The last time that I died, we were at a restaurant," Magyar said. He's almost nonchalant about the incidents. That happened three times to Magyar between June and September - hisheart stopped beating regularly and the charge from his vest kept him alive. The LifeVest continuously monitors the patient's heart, and if a life-threatening heart rhythm is detected, the device delivers a treatment shock to restore normal heart rhythm. Insurance covers most of the cost, but the LifeVest runs $3,370 a month to lease.
Heart monitor vest portable#
"To my knowledge, this is the only device that's portable and spares someone sudden death," Bean said last week as Magyar was getting a check up. They all jumped in helped me and actually resuscitated me." In May, he was in for an check up and was surprised when the doctor told told him to get to Holmes Regional Medical Center's emergency room immediately because his heart was racing too fast. Magyar, a former IBM researcher, started having health issues in 2004, when he had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery. It has a 92 percent success rate of keeping patients alive until emergency personnel can provide treatment, Zoll said.
Zoll claims the LifeVest, which will soon mark its 15-year anniversary, has been used by more than 100,000 patients since its introduction. "Without it, he wouldn't be here today," Pat Magyar said. Whatever unofficial name it gets, Magyar credits the LifeVest, made by the Pittsburgh-based Zoll Medical Corp., with keeping him alive long enough for doctors to implant a defibrillator into his chest to keep his heart beating normally.Īsk Magyar what he's thankful for for this Thanksgiving, and he quickly points to his doctors and the small, battery powered nylon vest with non-adhesive-sensing electrodes that shocked him back to life. "Well, it's really a bra," counters his wife, Pat. "I call it 'Bro,' said the 65-year-old Magyar, following a storyline from an old episode of Seinfeld. The only barrier between life and death in the last three incidents, Magyar is convinced, was a lightweight wearable defibrillator called the LifeVest.Īnd as traumatic as the near-death experiences were for Magyar and his wife, they still manage to find some humor in the ordeals. That is his heart went into fibrillation and stopped working - once while in the hospital, twice while at home and once as he was about to have a dinner at the Kiwi Tennis Club. Regis Magyar "died" four times this year.
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