Cardiac pacemakers: past, present and future

Pacemakers were the first active implantable devices. Being so commonly known nowadays, their use has been integrated to our daily lives, like the use of the aspirin or antibiotics. Only 60 years ago, people with heart diseases would have a very poor life quality or even died but ever since the use of pacemakers several heart diseases are not life threatening anymore. In this article, I present basic concepts about the physiology of the heart, the history of the development of cardiac pacemakers, and the characteristics of today´s pacemaker designs.