A new pacemaker being tested in New Zealand could help patients with heart failure feel and move better.
The device has been designed to copy the heart’s natural rhythm, speeding up and slowing down in sync with breathing.
The first trial patient got one at Waikato Hospital just before Christmas.
Cardiologist and University of Auckland medicine Professor Dr Martin Stiles, who was overseeing the trial, said the new pacemaker showed promising results in a study with sheep with heart failure.
The university tested whether sheep’s ability to exercise was improved by a variable heart pacemaker.
Sheep’s heart functions were similar to humans.
“Sheep with this respiratory variability pacing had an increase in their cardiac output by 23% compared to the sheep who were paced in the normal fashion. This is a dramatic increase in cardiac output,” Stiles said.
“Furthermore, what we’ve shown is that those sheep are fitter so that they can exercise more and their heart rate recovers much quicker than the sheep that have the other sort of pacing.”
Stiles said Auckland, Adelaide, Melbourne and Bristol in the UK were other potential centres for trials.
“Once we get these trials underway, we hope to roll it out more widely, initially probably in patients who are receiving pacemakers anyway, who have heart failure. But ultimately, perhaps it might be a treatment on its own, that is to say if someone doesn’t need a pacemaker, this could be a reason to put one in,” he said.
“We’ve been talking to some of the larger pacemaker companies about trying to take on this technology and develop it with us.
“Once you have one of these technologies getting it out to the wider world is challenging, but we’re hopeful we can and we’re really proud to be doing this in New Zealand, leading it from New Zealand.”
rnz.co.nz
