Already, they have set up a charitable project called "My Heart Your Heart," and have established relationships with hospitals in developing countries, such as Ghana and Vietnam, he said.

In such a program, recycled pacemakers would be sterilized and given new leads. The device would be handed off to local physicians who would donate their time surgically implanting them and following up with the patients to make sure they're healthy.

Critically, Eagle said they would only use devices with 70 percent of their expected battery life remaining, which would be four to seven years. (The typical life span of a pacemaker's battery is between five and 10 years, Eagle said, and rarely more than 15.)

CHEAPER OPTION

In the United States, new pacemakers and implantable defibrillators cost between $10,000 and $50,000, according to the researchers.

Even on the low end, the cost of the device could be the equivalent of four years of family income for someone in a developing country, Eagle said.

"People who are destitute, they can't get close to paying for a device," he said.

"A refurbished device would cost about $15 (if done by a hospital with their other sterilized equipment) to resterilize plus the cost of shipping to the third world," Dr. Timir S. Baman, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Michigan, and another co-author of the study, told DOTmed by email.

And it seems many Americans are willing to donate their pacemakers after they die. According to the University of Michigan, 90 percent of surveyed device patients in the United States would be donors if given a chance.

STATE OF DONATIONS

Already, in a modest way, American opportunities for charitable giving of the devices do exist. Since 1994, Heart Too Heart, a nonprofit set up by Bill Daem of Billings, Mont., has worked to get used devices to nearly 5,000 patients, mainly in South America and Eastern Europe, according to the publication Heartwire.

In Heart Too Heart, posthumously removed pacemakers are sterilized and hand-carried by U.S. medical doctors to physicians abroad, who surgically implant them at no cost to the patients.

But the process of getting those pacemakers to charities, now, is tricky.

"It's a very complicated issue," David Penepent, manager of Herson Funeral Home in Ithaca, N.Y., and president of Finger Lakes Funeral Association, told DOTmed News by phone.

Penepent said Herson donated the devices from 2003 until 2006, when management decided to put the kibosh on the donations for fear of running afoul of FDA rules or federal law.

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