When Dean Boyton collapsed at home after a long day at the beach volunteering for his local surf club, he at first put it down to fatigue and dehydration.
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But when he got to Shellharbour Hospital - to fix up the broken nose he sustained when he fell - he again passed out, with tests revealing his heart had paused for 20 seconds.
Further scans revealed the 50-year-old Blackbutt man had scar tissue on his heart, which meant blood flow to his heart was reduced, and it was not pumping properly.
In December, he became the first patient to undergo a new heart surgery technique at Wollongong Private Hospital.
The physiologic left bundle pacing procedure places the pacemaker in an area of the heart where it can imitate its electrical activity - unlike regular pacemakers.
"In the pacemaker world the traditional way is to put the wire in the heart and that has been working effectively for the past 30 years or so," his cardiologist Dr Ivan Subiakto said.
"But sometimes the heart is not activated as physiologic as it should be.
"The way physiologic pacing works differently, is we anchor the pacemaker wire as close as possible to the heart's native electrical system in the hope it will give a very similar electric propagation as the normal heart would."
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What that means for Mr Boyton is a quicker recovery, and improved outcomes with the pacemaker better able to mimic the way a heart beats normally.
"The scarring on my heart meant that it was inflamed, which slowed down the electrical signal coming from the brain to the heart - there was a poor connection," he said.
"This technique means the pacemaker can better mimic that electrical signal - and the more natural the pulse is to the heart the better it is."
Dr Subiakto said he was among the first in the world to study physiologic pacing in Canada.
He said the procedure had become increasingly popular in the last 12 months, particularly overseas, and he was thrilled to bring it to patients in the Illawarra.
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