Dr Jeffrey Alison |
The size of a grain of rice, the device is being trialled in heart
failure patients who have failed to respond to, or are otherwise unable to
receive, conventional pacemakers.
MonashHeart cardiologist Dr Jeffrey Alison leads the Cardiac
Rhythm Management research team within Monash Cardiovasular Research Centre,
Monash University, and performed the Australian-first procedure earlier this
month at Monash Medical Centre.
“Heart failure is a serious condition in which the heart is unable
to pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands,” Dr Alison said.
“A progressive, debilitating disease, heart failure often occurs
when electrical signals within the heart are disrupted, causing the heart’s
ventricles to beat in an uncoordinated or unsynchronized pattern, which in turn
enlarges the left ventricle and makes the heart less efficient.”
Without therapy, people with heart failure deteriorate and may
eventually die of the condition.
Dr Alison said that cardiac
resynchronisation therapy (CRT) offers a proven treatment for heart failure by
electrically stimulating the heart, but as many as 30 percent of heart failure
patients receiving conventional CRT do not respond to the treatment.
“This new wireless device
known as WiSE™ (Wireless Stimulation Endocardially) is
designed to improve the heart’s pumping ability and help overcome symptoms of
heart failure.”
Rather than using pacing leads—decades‐old technology with
well‐documented problems—WiSE paces the heart via a tiny wireless electrode, implanted
directly in the heart’s left ventricle.
“This approach provides the cardiologist
greater choice of pacing locations, enabling patient-specific customisation of
pacing site,” Dr Alison said.
“It also eliminates the need for a pacing wire on the
outside of the heart’s left ventricle that can have associated problems.”
“MonashHeart and Monash Cardiovascular Research Centre are
thrilled to participate in this landmark clinical trial that builds on previous
positive results of this first-of-its-kind innovation for heart failure
patients, and offers new hope for our patients,” Dr Alison said.
The clinical trial known as SOLVE-CRT (Stimulation of the Left
Ventricular Endocardium for Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy) will enrol a
total of 350 heart failure patients across 45 sites in the US, Europe and
Australia.
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