Pacemaker lead failure

Question

My daughter was born with several heart defects.a pacemaker was implanted after surgery because she had complete heart-block. She thrived after her surgery and lived life to the fullest.On June 20,2009, when she was three and a half years old, she tragically fell to the ground. She was rushed to the hospital, but they were unsuccessful in reviving her.It was later determined at autopsy that her pacemaker lead had fractured. It was a Medtronic pacemaker. I have been in disbelief since then. I understand that these are just wires.And as an electrophysiologist so eloquently put it, "they are like a paperclip.If you bend a paperclip enough times, it will eventually break." And that leads are the "achillles heal" of the pacemaker. This to a mourning mother doesn't sit well.My question is this-why do they choose to put a child's pacemaker in her abdomen when they know children play around,run, swing, etc?? Whenever I would question if my daughter was capable of an activity, I was continually told, "treat her like any other child!She is perfectly healthy and normal." They also tried to tell me that they could not get the digital information from the pacemaker to let us know when a the brake actually occurred. i have talked to other representatives from another medical equipment manufacturer and they told me all they had to was hook up their wires to it and it would print out all the dates an "event" happened.Is this true and why won't Medtronic do this? The specialist were telling me that companies are currently trying to create wireless pacemaker. How far have they come with this process,if you are aware? They told me that there is no money in the research for children's pacemakers.That everything they use is passed down from adult research.

This discussion is related to Pacemaker lead failure.