Defibrillation's Alternative: A new approach would stop ventricular fibrillation before it started

Technology Review ^ | June 07, 2006 | Duncan Graham-Rowe

[annie laurie]

Treating a failing heart by zapping it with a painful, powerful electrical shock has become the standard procedure. Now, a medical device company, based in West Henrietta, NY, has patented a technique that avoids the need for such dramatic treatment, by predicting the onset of fibrillation -- the heart rhythm that can lead to sudden death -- and treating it before it occurs.

The preventative treatment does, like defibrillation, involve electrically stimulating the heart, says Michael Weiner, CEO of Biophan Technologies. But this new technique's weak signal would be minuscule compared to the jolt that defibrillators normally deliver. "I know patients with defibrillators who live in fear of that son-of-a-gun going off," he says.

According to Weiner, the algorithms underpinning the technology could easily be programmed into new implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs). More importantly, because the technique uses only a fraction of the power needed for defibrillation, it could also be incorporated into pacemakers -- much smaller and cheaper devices normally used only to stop the heart rate from slowing by regulating it with regular low-power electrical pulses, compared with the one-off, high-powered shocks used by defibrillators to correct fast or erratic rhythms.

Ventricular fibrillation (VF, also known as "V fib")) occurs when the cells in the two lower chambers of the heart, the ventricles, stop beating in synchrony, causing them to start quivering. This can prevent the heart from pumping blood properly and, if untreated, can lead to death, usually within a few minutes.

[annie laurie]

Long article, but interesting reading.

[annie laurie]

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