For the third time since the presidential election, Vice President Dick Cheney was hospitalized last week for heart-related problems.
Cheney, 60, returned to work Monday morning, just two days after having surgery to implant a device which monitors irregularities in heartbeat and fixes them by administering a small electrical shock.
“If (the heart) gets slow and misses beats, the pacemaker takes over,” said University of Memphis health educator Jacqueline Defouw. “If the heart starts fibrilating, which is not beating effectively to send a pulse through the body, the device will send an electric charge through the heart which causes (the heart) to have a normal beat again.”
The device, called an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, is small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand.
Cheney’s heart problems began in 1978 when he experienced his first of four heart attacks. Shortly after the presidential election in November, Cheney checked himself into George Washington University Hospital after complaining of heart problems. Doctors opened a blocked artery and Cheney returned to work. Four months later Cheney returned to the hospital and had the same artery re-opened.
