Pacemaker Patient Dies After Seven Years

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32053, 30 July 1969, Page 30

Pacemaker Patient Dies After Seven Years

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, July 29.

A man who was kept alive for more than seven years with a pacemaker to help his heart has died in Auckland at the age of 77.

He was Mr William Everard Maclndoe, an accountant, whose case attracted wide attention in January, 1962, when he became the first person in New Zealand to have a pacemaker inserted in his body. The operation to insert the battery-powered device was carried out in Green Lane Hospital. More recently, the operation has been performed every few weeks. “It is in no sense an artificial heart,” an Auckland specialist said today. “A small, battery-powered device is inserted in the body and this provides a regular stimulus to the heart in cases where some blockage is causing it to beat too slowly.” From time to time the batteries have to be changed, but this calls for only minor surgery.

Mr Maclndoe’s daughter, Mrs M. Harricks, of Birkenhead, said that for two years and a half after he first had the pacemaker inserted he was able to go in and out of the city and move round freely, but he became more restricted as he grew older. “He was virtually kept alive by this pacemaker over the years,” she said.