Patient Care — Heart resynchronization
V. Seenu Reddy, MD, MBA | More about Dr. Reddy
Appointments and referrals: 210-450-0999
Heart
resynchronization gives S.A. man a new lease on life:
Three heart
attacks, congestive heart failure and an enlarged heart, all before the age of
30 — That's what happened to a San Antonio man whose life has been turned around
with an amazing implanted device. V. Seenu Reddy, MD, MBA, UT Medicine Cardiothoracic Surgery, and Manoj Panday, MD, UT Medicine Cardiology,
worked together to stabilize patient Samuel Ramirez's heart – and completely changed the quality of Mr. Ramirez's life.
Read KENS-5 story, view video
In some patients with heart failure, a new kind of pacemaker can re-coordinate the muscular function of the damaged heart, relieving the symptoms of heart failure, and reducing the odds of dying. Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT, which is sometimes called biventricular pacing) is a form of therapy for congestive heart failure caused by dilated cardiomyopathy. In approximately 30% of patients with heart failure, an abnormality in the heart's electrical conducting system (called an "intraventricular conduction delay" or bundle branch block) causes the two ventricles to beat in an asynchronous fashion — instead of beating simultaneously, the two ventricles beat slightly out of phase. This asynchrony greatly reduces the efficiency of the ventricles in patients with heart failure, whose hearts are already damaged.
CRT re-coordinates the beating of the two ventricles by pacing both ventricles simultaneously. This differs from typical pacemakers, which pace only the right ventricle.
Information above courtesy of About.com Heart Health Center.
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