Pacemakers Don't Help Some Heart Patients

A new study shows that about one-third of patients with congestive heart failure who are treated with specialized pacemakers to electrically resynchronize their hearts fail to respond.

The current criteria for the implantation of a pacemaker do not accurately identify those patients who will or will not benefit from the implantation. The study looked at information derived from a standard electrocardiogram (EKG) to examine those factors associated with response or nonresponse. On average, those patients who had experienced a previous heart attack did not respond as well to pacemaker therapy as patients who had not had a previous heart attack.

Electrically resynchronizing the heart with a specialized pacemaker is a costly and invasive treatment. According to the study results, at least 33% of patients with congestive heart failure who were treated with this therapy failed to respond. The new findings suggest that more research is needed in order to find out how best to select patients for cardiac resynchronization therapy.

The study, reported in the January 18, 2005, issue of Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology (PACE), was authored by Matthew R. Reynolds, M.D., M.Sc., of the division of cardiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (USA).




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