New device may help avoid heart transplant

Researchers recently said that an implanted device that helps the heart’s pumping action reduced death rates in clinical trials. And that it is probably the best alternative to heart transplants for terminally ill heart failure patients.

“Heart transplants are still the gold standard of treatment for patients with end-stage heart disease, but this device should probably be considered the new silver standard, “the study’s lead investigator, Dr Eric Rose of New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, said in an interview. He presented the study’s results at the annual scientific sessions of the American Heart Association.

Thoratec Corporation’s HeartMate VE device, which works by taking over the pumping function of the heart’s left ventricle, currently is approved only as a bridge to heart transplants and not as a treatment for heart disease.

Dr Rose said only about half of the 4,000 Americans who seek heart transplants each year receive them. For those ineligible to receive transplants, and tens of thousands of others with severe heart disease, he said the device seemed a suitable alternative to prolong survival and improve quality of life.

Rose said the study showed the device could prevent 270 of every 1,000 deaths caused annually by end-stage heart failure. “This treatment impact is nearly four times that of proven drug treatments for heart failure,” he said. The study, conducted at 22 heart transplant centers in the United States, found that the probability of one year survival for those on the HeartMate VE was 52 per cent, compared with 25 per cent for patients treated medically.

Two-year survival rates were 23 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively. In addition, 23 of the HeartMate VE patients are still alive, compared with only five patients in the group receiving standard therapy.

The median length of survival for patients treated with standard therapy was 150 days, compared with 408 days for those on the HeartMate VE. The longest living patient supported by a device remains alive at nearly three years.

Survival rates were particularly dramatic for patients younger than 60 years, with a one year survival rate of 74 per cent, compared with only 33 per cent for those on standard therapies “That’s about as good as the one year survival of people that get heart transplants, Dr Rose said. About 10 per cent of patients supported by the device suffered strokes, half of whom had a major stroke. Researchers said the number of strokes might have been higher if not for the textured surface of the device, which is meant to inhibit formation of blood clots and thereby allow patients to be treated without routine anticoagulation drugs required for use with other ventricular assist devices now in use.

(Source: Reuters)