IMPROVED TREATMENT FOR THOSE WITH LBBB

• by HeartOfBrick
• 2015-12-17 05:12:36
• General Posting
• 1663 views
• 1 comments

Hi All,

Hope everyone is doing well. I came across this article and thought I would share. New wireless treatment (WiSE) for those with LBBB and have CRT devise that isn't helping them. Treatment recently received EU Approval and clinical trials to begin next year in the US.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015 05:52PM

NEW YORK. (KFSN) --
Shortness of breath, fatigue, even the inability to get up and move across the room; that's what happens when your heart is not working properly. Five million people suffer from heart failure in the United States. Half of those people will die within five years of diagnosis. Now, there's a new technology that may keep hearts beating longer and stronger.

Forty-four year old Annelies Jacobs felt twice her age. Her heart was out of synch. She told Ivanhoe, "I was housebound. I could not do anything."

"Normally, the heart contracts in a synchronous matter, meaning all the walls come in at the same time," explained Vivek Reddy, M.D., Cardiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

But, in Annelies, the heart walls contracted at different times. Doctors implanted a traditional pacemaker with three wire leads sending electrical currents to the heart but it didn't help.

Now, Dr. Reddy is one of the first to implant a new type of pacemaker called WiSE.

Dr. Reddy detailed, "Instead of a lead, we actually put a pacing pellet. It's a very small pellet."

Placed directly into heart tissue, it's powered by an ultrasound device implanted in the chest wall. It wirelessly sends ultrasound waves to the pellet.

"The pellet converts this ultrasound energy to electrical energy and that paces the heart," Dr. Reddy continued.

All without a wire. Of the 34 patients implanted in Europe, 80 percent saw improvement in their heart function.

Rick Riley, Chief Operating Officer of EBR Systems, who created the device, said, "I think several of these patients today are alive because of this."

Annelies is one of them. She said, "Now, I can almost do everything. I can go on a bike. I'm walking, I go to the gym and I even got back to work."

Dr. Reddy says the WiSE implant has just been approved for use in Europe. Researchers hope to take it into clinical trials in the United States by next year.