William T. Abraham,
M.D., left, co-director of the Linda and Jack
Gill Heart Institute at UK and chief of cardiovascular medicine,
and Westby Fisher, M.D., a UK electrophysiologist, talk with Susan
Levy, 61, of Cincinnati, the first Kentucky patient to receive a
new investigational heart monitor.
See related story
in the Aug. 24, 2000, edition of the Lexington
Herald-Leader.
|
LEXINGTON, KY (Aug.
23, 2000) – For the first time in Kentucky, a team of physicians
and staff at the Linda and Jack Gill Heart Institute at the
University of Kentucky has implanted a new investigational monitor
in two heart failure patients. The new device under study will
allow the UK health care team caring for the patients to monitor
their conditions long distance via the World Wide Web.
William T. Abraham, M.D., co-director of the Linda and Jack
Gill Heart Institute at UK and chief of cardiovascular medicine,
is the principal investigator for the study at UK and a member of
the national committee overseeing the development of the device.
Westby Fisher, M.D., a UK electrophysiologist, implanted the
device on Tuesday, Aug. 22, in Susan Levy, 61, of Cincinnati, and
Wanda Moore, 50, of Ashland. The Chronicle Implantable Hemodynamic Monitor (Chronicle IHM)
is the world’s first implanted monitor for the medical
management of patients with heart failure. About 100 such devices
have been implanted at eight centers across the country, and the
Gill Heart Institute at UK is the only one to offer it in
Kentucky. The device is unique because it allows doctors to monitor their
patients’ conditions long distance. Information from the
Chronicle IHM can be downloaded over the telephone to a secure Web
site accessible to the UK heart failure team. "This has the potential to revolutionize the way we take
care of patients," Abraham said. "For example, with this
monitor, we can know how one of our heart failure patients from
Eastern Kentucky is doing – without the patient having to go to
an emergency room, or drive two or three hours to Lexington." The device also may avoid the need for invasive procedures,
such as certain forms of heart catheterization, in many patients. Patients also keep a pocket diary to record symptoms and when
they occur. To match the diary entries to the data recorded by the
Chronicle IHM, the patient passes a magnetic device over the
implanted device in his or her chest. That triggers the Chronicle
IHM to create a date and time stamp in its memory that coincides
with the patient’s personal diary. Information from the device can be downloaded in the physician’s
office. Such data can assist the health care team in adjusting the
patient’s treatment.
Heart failure, a widespread and debilitating condition in which
the heart does not pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands,
results in fatigue, shortness of breath, swelling, and a shortened
life expectancy. Almost 5 million Americans – including an
estimated 60,000 Kentuckians – suffer from heart failure, and it
is the most common cause of hospitalization for the elderly. Made by Medtronic, Inc., the Chronicle IHM is implanted in the
upper chest in the same location as a pacemaker, but it is not a
pacemaker. The device continuously monitors the heart’s function
by measuring and recording the pressure changes inside the heart.
The pressures show how efficiently the heart is pumping. The Chronicle IHM system consists of a monitor that contains a
small computer that records the heart’s pressures, performance,
heart rate and activity level; a lead that rests inside the heart
and connects to the monitor; and the external pressure reference
that the patient uses to read the barometric pressure of the
environment, which is necessary to get an accurate heart pressure
reading. The first Chronicle IHM was implanted in 1998, and the device
is still in the investigational stage.
By
Vikki Franklin |
