Dick Cheney may not have a pulse, but part of his ticker is spinning at 9,000 RPM.

The former Vice President provided an instant laugh line for comedians this week when it was revealed that during his latest heart surgery, doctors installed a new implant called left ventricular assist device, or LVAD.

The pump runs something like a drill bit, continuously rotating at 9,000 rotations per minute rather than squeezing and releasing, so Cheney now officially has no pulse, according to Dr. Stuart D. Russell, chief of heart failure and transplantation at Johns Hopkins’ Comprehensive Transplant Center [Baltimore Sun].

A device like Cheney’s is implanted in his chest, with the exception of the batteries, which the user must wear in a separate vest. (Though the Baltimore Sun reports that patients can wear the power source “holster style,” which may be more Cheney’s style.)

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Vice-President Dick Cheney went to the hospital this afternoon after his doctors detected an abnormal rhythm to his heartbeat. He was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, meaning that the upper chambers of his heart, the atria, weren’t beating properly, and doctors prepared to give his heart an electric shock to restore its proper rhythm.

Atrial fibrillation isn’t an immediately life-threatening condition, unlike ventricular fibrillation, when the heart’s lower chambers stop beating, blood stops pumping, and the body begins to shut down. Patients with atrial fibrillation may feel palpitations or shortness of breath, but often it causes no symptoms at all. When it happens, blood isn’t pumped completely out of the atria. That increases the likelihood that the blood will form a clot, which can then travel into the brain and cause a stroke. That’s the most important reason for treating the condition [The Wall Street Journal health blog].

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