New treatments to save a broken heart

Heart failure: it’s the leading cause of death in the United States, beating all cancers combined. Treating it costs more than $30 billion a year.

Typical treatments include medications, surgery and, for the very worst cases, a heart transplant.

For those people whose medications are not helping and are not quite ready for a transplant, there’s new hope.

A one- to two-hour procedure could help get your heart back in shape.

Blockages, high blood pressure, heart attack, coronary artery disease. Six and a half million people are suffering from some form of heart failure.

“The symptoms that patients are mostly going to have is shortness of breath,” said Allegheny Health cardiologist Matthew Lander.

But that can quickly turn into something more serious.

“Probably 50% of patients that have heart failure are going to pass away from heart failure within five years,” Lander said.

Lander is working with teams worldwide to study a first-of-its-kind minimally invasive treatment option for heart failure. The Accucinch Ventricular Restoration System aims to reduce the size of the heart’s left ventricle.

“It’s a catheter-based device that’s released into the left side of the heart,” Lander said.

A flexible implant is attached to the interior of the left ventricular wall and then cinched, reducing the size of the left ventricle.

“The idea is that the tension and the wall stress in the heart is reduced and that this can lead to improvement in symptoms,” Lander said.

Early clinical data suggests it could be a good option for people who are not responding to medications but who don’t yet need a heart transplant.

“There’s potentially millions of patients still in that gap that need something, and this is something that can really fill that gap for some patients,” Lander said.

This procedure is being used in clinical trials in 80 heart centers worldwide.

It’s a viable option when existing therapies like lifestyle changes, medications and pacemakers are no longer able to manage the symptoms of heart failure.

They hope the FDA will approve it in the next one to two years.