Patient Care — Heart resynchronization – UT Cardiothoracic Surgery

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.