Heart-failure Could be Helped by Pacemakers

A new study indicates that more heat failure cases than the more serious could be helped by pacemakers. 

This study comes from Karolinska Institute in Sweden that showed change in ECG wave known as the QRS prolongation is associated with a higher rate of heart-failure mortality. The details of this study was published The European Heart Journal.

The study is being conducted by a team that consists of researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, Linkoping University, Stockholm South General Hospital and Karolinska University.

Based on the data from the Swedish Heart Failure they identified two different types of heart failure. Their results show that a particular change in the ECG wave is associated with a higher mortality rate amongst patients with heart failure. The difference which is known as the QRS prolongation shows that the left and right sides of the heart do not work together.

One way to treat the weakened cooperation that the QRS prolongation indicates is to insert a heart failure pacemaker, an advanced type of the device that sends signals to both the left and right sides of the heart. However, such a pacemaker is only used in the most severe cases. Study suggests that patients with milder forms of this type of heart failure can also be treated with a pacemaker"This advanced pacemaker has not yet been tried on heart failure caused by a reduced ability of the heart muscles to relax," says principal investigator docent Lars Lund. "However, our results indicate that it could be valuable for this type of heart failure too, and this possibility is something that we must now go on to explore."