PITTSBURGH — There’s a global clinical trial underway for people suffering from heart failure.
There are 400 patients in all and 80 cardiovascular centers taking part in the trial. Allegheny General Hospital here in western Pennsylvania is one of them.
AGH cardiologist doctor Mareet Kanwar has a patient taking part in the new minimally invasive heart failure treatment.
“His first thing was maybe I can go back to the gym if this works out. So it gives him one more thing to look forward to,” said Dr. Kanwar.
Dr. Kanwar showed Channel 11 News how the treatment works with an animated video. It shows how a catheter is placed in an artery in the leg, allowing the doctors to put a small implant called an AccuCinch in the left enlarged ventricle.
The AccuCinch, which is pretty small is placed in the left side of the heart to reduce the size and decrease the wall stress.
“Sometimes, patients are not candidates for surgery, so giving more and more treatment options beyond medical therapy I think is key because only then where we scale to the needs of our heart failure patients,” said Dr. Kanwar.
This new heart failure treatment still needs FDA approval.
To be eligible, patients need a heart failure diagnosis, have low heart pumping ability and have to be taking heart failure medications but still have worsening symptoms.
“Whether it prolongs life or not, I think it’s too soon to say but at this point we are hoping it will reduce the burden of symptomatic heart failure,” said Dr. Kanwar.
The procedure would require a one night stay in the hospital. The goal is to improve the quality of life for millions of heart failure patients.
Patients will have two years to report how they’re feeling in this clinical trial.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW