AIIMS Jammu has implanted a leadless pacemaker for the first time — a device about the size of a capsule, placed directly inside the heart through a vein in the leg, with no chest incision and no wires running under the skin.
The procedure was performed on Monday and reported on 21 and 22 September 2026.
Why this patient needed it
The case was not a routine first pacemaker. The patient already had a conventional device, and the surgical pocket holding it — the small pouch under the skin of the chest where a standard pacemaker sits — had become severely infected.
That is a genuinely difficult position. Putting a second conventional device into the same situation carries a significant risk of the infection coming straight back, because the problem is the pocket and the leads, not the pulse generator. A leadless device removes both: there is no pocket to infect and no transvenous leads to colonise.
What was actually done
Two teams worked the case. The cardiology side was handled by Dr Zubair Farooq and Dr Mayank Saini, both Assistant Professors, who implanted the miniaturised device into the right ventricle via the femoral vein — entering at the groin and threading the capsule up into the heart.
Dr Rahul Gorka, Associate Professor in Plastic Surgery, carried out extensive surgical debridement and reconstructive repair of the infected pacemaker pocket. Specialised cardiac nurses and technicians supported both teams.
The hospital says the patient is stable, free of complications and recovering well. The patient has not been named.
Why it matters beyond one case
The claim worth paying attention to is not that the device is new technology — leadless pacemakers have been in use for years. It is that the procedure happened in Jammu.
For a family in this region, an advanced cardiac intervention has historically meant a decision about travelling out of J&K: the cost of getting there, somewhere to stay, weeks away from work or college, and the practical reality that a relative has to go along. Every procedure that becomes available locally takes one item off that list. The AIIMS Jammu team made exactly that point in announcing the case.
It follows a run of similar firsts in the city's tertiary hospitals — among them the GMC Jammu surgeons who removed a rare adrenal tumour from a 14-year-old by keyhole surgery this month. Individually these are single cases. Together they are the slow accumulation of things you no longer have to leave the region for.
One honest limit on this story: a hospital's first procedure of a given kind tells you the capability exists, not that it is routinely available. Nothing has been published about how many such implants AIIMS Jammu expects to do, what one costs, or whether it is covered under any health scheme. Those are the questions that decide whether a capability becomes a service.
Sources: Daily Excelsior — AIIMS Jammu performs its 1st leadless pacemaker implantation; Greater Kashmir — maiden leadless pacemaker implantation at AIIMS Jammu.
