In this two-minute video, learn how the CardioMEMS system allows physicians to monitor and treat patients who suffer from heart failure before overt symptoms occur. The implantable, wireless device transmits daily sensor readings to health care providers, allowing for personalized and proactive management to reduce the likelihood of hospitalization.
KUNJAN A. BHATT: Heart failure is a condition that afflicts patients in whom their heart is weak or their heart is stiff. And it results in the accumulation of fluid in the body. RAY WILLIAMSON: I told him, I said, I'd like to find something to do to get rid of this fluid. That what I kept telling him. KUNJAN A. BHATT: The thought behind CardioMEMS is before patients have symptoms, why don't we treat the underlying cause, which is a rise in pressure? So, as the pressures rise in the heart, patients can develop symptoms later on. In fact, symptoms happen days, maybe even weeks, after pressures rise the heart. So the principle behind CardioMEMS is to manage heart failure patients from their home. And this is a device that can be used in the hospital, but the goal is to decrease hospitalizations. So let's start talking a little bit about the actual device. Actually, it is kind of scrunched up on the tip of this catheter. And this makes it easy to go from the vein in the leg, through the abdomen, into the heart, into a branch of a lung artery. It's an overnight observation stay, so patients stay one night in the hospital. And the expectation is they go home the next day. The patient we implanted has been in the hospital now four times in the last two months with heart failure-- four times. RAY WILLIAMSON: Here came a weekend again and I had my heart was fluttering, fluttering, fluttering. I said-- I told my wife, I said, get me back down there to that hospital. I said, my heart's just a-fluttering. KUNJAN A. BHATT: It's actually already helped me take care of him, having only been in his body one day. RAY WILLIAMSON: Awesome. KUNJAN A. BHATT: The only place that's been doing this in Texas, as of now, is the Heart Hospital of Austin. So if patients or physicians are interested in this, I encourage them to contact a heart failure cardiologist at the Heart Hospital of Austin.
