HEALTH AND BEAUTY CLOSE-UP-9 September 2008-Benefit Data of Cardiac Devices in Heart Failure Patients Presented at ESC Congress(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com

New analyses presented during the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) on the effects

of cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) in patients with mild heart failure from the Reverse (Resynchronisation Reverses Remodeling in Systolic Left Ventricular Dysfunction) trial show improvement in several areas, including left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), a standard measure of the heart's pumping effectiveness and a key indicator of heart health.

Patients with CRT experienced improvement in LVEF from 28 percent at baseline to 35 percent at 18 months; a healthy heart's pumping effectiveness ranges from 50 to 75 percent.

In a release, the group noted:

The new analyses also demonstrate the ability of CRT to prevent or slow the progression of the disease in patients with mild heart failure.

Led by Prof. Cecilia Linde, M.D., Ph.D., of Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, and supported by Medtronic, Reverse is the first large-scale, global, randomised, double-blind trial to evaluate CRT in mildly symptomatic heart-failure patients or asymptomatic patients who previously had heart failure symptoms.

"The positive results we are seeing from CRT in patients with mild heart failure are similar to those reported in patients with more advanced disease studied in earlier trials," said Prof. Linde. "When we started the Reverse trial, we found that although the patients had mild symptoms and were well treated with recommended drug therapies, their hearts didn't function very well in the left ventricle. These patients need treatment options beyond medication, such as CRT."

The new analyses presented at the ESC Congress included detailed data on the heart's left-ventricular function obtained via cardiac ultrasound. In addition to LVEF improvements seen at 18 months, a measure of the heart's volume and size (left ventricular end-systolic volume index, or LVESVi) improved with CRT from 95 ml/m2 at the start of the trial to 68 ml/m2 after 18 months. No similar improvements were seen in patients who did not receive CRT. These improvements are significant because cardiac structure and remodeling can correlate with improvements in patients' health in terms of delayed time to heart failure hospitalisations, which also was observed in the Reverse study at 18 months.

Medtronic is a global provider of medical technology.

((Comments on this story may be sent to health@closeupmedia.com))

((Distributed via M2 Communications Ltd - http://www.m2.com))