Artificial cardiac pacemaker

An artificial cardiac pacemaker (artificial pacemaker, and sometimes just pacemaker, although the term is also used to refer to the body's natural cardiac pacemaker) is a medical device, currently always implanted, that generates electrical pulses delivered by electrodes to one or more of the chambers of the heart, the upper atria or lower ventricles. Each pulse causes the targeted chamber(s) to contract and pump blood, thus regulating the function of the electrical conduction system of the heart.

The primary purpose of a pacemaker is to maintain an adequate heart rate, either because the heart's natural pacemaker is not fast enough, or because there is a block in the heart's electrical conduction system. Modern pacemakers are externally programmable and allow a cardiologist to select the optimal pacing modes for individual patients. Most pacemakers are on demand, in which the stimulation of the heart is based on the dynamic demand of the circulatory system. Others send out a fixed rate of impulses.

A specific type of pacemaker called an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator combines pacemaker and defibrillator functions in a single implantable device. Others, called biventricular pacemakers, have multiple electrodes stimulating different positions within the ventricles (the lower heart chambers) to improve their synchronization.