Study: New Device Improves Heart Failure Survival

[steven johnson]

The problem with healthcare reform is how to pay for it. Too much disease for too little money. Here's another neat toy. How to pay for it?

Obama was going to pay for healthcare reform with digital electronic records -- then eliminating waste and fraud -- then selecting less expensive treatments with the same outcomes. Ugly truth: too much pathology, too little money to pay for it.

Doctors say that a new type of heart pump greatly improves survival of people with severe heart failure. It could become the first one of these devices to be widely used as a permanent treatment.
The device is implanted next to a patient's own heart to help it pump. In a study, the new device increased by four times the number of patients who survived at least two years, compared to an older pump that is used now just for short periods to keep people alive until a heart transplant can be done.

The big issue is cost. The pump costs $80,000, plus $45,000 for the surgery and hospital stay to implant it.

''It will allow older people who are not heart transplant patients to stay alive but at a higher cost. It's all about who's going to pay,'' said Cleveland Clinic heart chief Dr. Steven Nissen, who had no role in the research.


Study: New Device Improves Heart Failure Survival

[Warpy]

1. I once took care of someone who stayed alive for months

on one of the old console ventricular assist devices. The real problem with those things is that they pretty much destroyed what was left of the patient's heart. The benefit is that the increased perfusion allowed the patient's other organ systems to heal and give him the best chance of surviving transplant, which this particular patient finally got.

One thing they've since found with other, less destructive ventricular assist devices in clinical trials is that they've allowed a patient's diseased heart to rest and heal, often to the point that the device can be removed and the patient can survive for some time on his own heart, a definite improvement over risky transplantation and post operative immunosuppression.

Eventually, the VAD will eliminate the need for transplant. At least that's really what they're working toward.

Short article at: http://heartdisease.about.com/library/weekly/aa010101f.htm

[aquart]

2. Unless you don't have insurance.

Or the insurance company decides it's "experimental."