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Of Pacemakers and Statistics: The Actuarial Method Extended
Author(s) -
DUSSEL JAN,
WOLBARST ANTHONY B.,
SCOTTMILLAR ROBERT N.,
OBEL ISRAEL W.P.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
pacing and clinical electrophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.686
H-Index - 101
eISSN - 1540-8159
pISSN - 0147-8389
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-8159.1980.tb04298.x
Subject(s) - medicine , statistics , series (stratigraphy) , simple (philosophy) , mathematics , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , biology
Pacemakers cease functioning because of either natural battery exhaustion (nbe) or component failure (cf). A study of four series of pacemakers shows that a simple extension of the actuarial method, so as to incorporate Normal statistics, makes possible a quantitative differentiation between the two modes of failure. This involves the separation of the overall failure probability density function PDF(t) into constituent parts pdf nbe (t) and pdf cf (t). The approach should allow a meaningful comparison of (he characteristics of different pacemaker types.