Cardiac Resynchronization Devices Important in Managing HF Patients

The patient data shows that CRT, in combination with optimal medical therapy (OMT, considered to be beta blockers and ACE inhibitors or aldosterone receptor blockers), significantly reduced the risk of heart failure hospitalizations or death in the first 18 months over OMT alone in patients with asymptomatic or mild HF (currently, CRT is indicated for patients with moderate or severe heart failure). At 18 months, 15.7% of study patients without CRT who were hospitalized for HF died, compared to 7.5% of HF patients studied who had a CRT, an approximately 50% reduction. The study was presented during the annual scientific meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA), held during October 2008 in Toronto (ON, Canada).

"Even in patients who generally have mild or no symptoms of heart failure, CRT can have a positive impact and delay the time to first heart failure hospitalization or death,” said study presenter William T. Abraham, M.D., chief of cardiovascular medicine at Ohio State University. "Preventing the progression of heart failure with device therapy can lead to better patient outcomes and reduce economic burden to the hospital and health care system.”

Despite the fact that the trial did not meet statistical significance for its primary endpoint (percent of patients worsened at 12 months using a heart failure clinical composite score [CCS], which includes subjective and objective measures of heart failure status), more patients in the trial improved with CRT; this trend continues at the 18 months mark.

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Ohio State University