Presentation description

Cardiac Pacing via Left Bundle Branch Pacing (LBBP) has been found to improve synchronicity in the heart and may lead to a decrease in heart failure occurrence. The current LBBP techniques are limited by difficulties in implantation and obtaining capture of the heart's electrical system. We desired to create an electrode that obtains an impedance value similar to that of clinically used electrodes as a proof of concept for further research on multi-contact electrode pacing. Our hypothesis was that a multi-contact lead electrode with a circumferential contact point would produce a significantly higher area of contact and in turn a significantly lower impedance value. Using a 15 thousandths silver wire we 3D printed a solid substrate and affixed the wires in along the manifold via a low viscosity epoxy. We measured impedance values of our electrode via Electronic Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and also via Medtronic's CareLink SmartSync pacing system as an approximation of impedance behavior in-vivo. We then compared these impedance values to the clinically used 3830 electrode and several smaller area multi-contact electrodes. In order to test these impedance values we ran our tests in both saline and in tissue. The tissue that we used was commercially available chicken breast. We implanted these electrodes in tissue and then submerged the tissue in a saline bath and measured the impedance. We found that our circumferentially designed electrode had a similar impedance value to that of the clinically used electrode and found that there was a correlation between surface area and impedance values. Furthermore, there was low variability between contacts during bipolar pacing indicating good contact-to-contact spacing in our design. Finding this as a positive proof of concept, we can further research the correlation between surface area and impedance by designing similar electrodes of varying surface area and testing their impedance values in a similar manner.