Short Description: 'Revolutionary' pacemaker reverses heart failure: Study
'Revolutionary' pacemaker reverses heart failure: Study
Auckland [New Zealand], February 8 : A pacemaker is a small device that's placed (implanted) in the chest to help control the heartbeat. It's used to prevent the heart from beating too slowly. A recent study has elaborated on a revolutionary pacemaker, that re-established the heart's naturally irregular beat.
Manaaki Manawa, the Centre for Heart Research at the University of Auckland led the research and the results have been published in journal, 'Basic Research in Cardiology'.
The revolutionary pacemaker is set to be trialled in New Zealand heart patients this year, following successful animal trials. "Currently, all pacemakers pace the heart metronomically, which means a very steady, even pace. But when you record heart rate in a healthy individual, you see it is constantly on the move," said Professor Julian Paton, a lead researcher and director of Manaaki Manawa.
"If you analyse the frequencies within your heart rate, you find the heart rate is coupled to your breathing. It goes up on inspiration, and it goes down on expiration, and that is a natural phenomenon in all animals and humans. And we're talking about very ancient animals that were on the planet 430 million years ago."
Twelve years ago, Paton was a member of a group of scientists who decided to investigate the function of this variability. They made a mathematical model that predicted it saved energy. That made them question why a metronomic heartbeat was used in heart-failure patients who lacked energy. They asked, "Why aren't we pacing them with this variability?"
All cardiovascular disease patients lose the heart rate variability, which is an early sign that something is going wrong. "People with high blood pressure, people with heart failure, their heart rate is not being modulated by their breathing. It may be a little bit, but it's very, very depressed, very suppressed," Paton said. "We decided that we would put the heart rate variability back into animals with heart failure and see if it did anything good."
( Details and picture courtesy ANI, the content is auto-generated from the feed.)
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