Impedance cardiography helps identify patients at risk of heart failure
2 October 2005
San Diego, Calif., USA. A study conducted by the San Diego Veterans
Administration Healthcare System and University of California found that
impedance cardiography (ICG) and BNP testing can help predict heart
failure-related.
The results were annouced by CardioDynamics, developer of impedance
cardiography technology, at the Ninth Annual Heart Failure Society of
America (HFSA) Scientific Meeting held in September in Florida.
Researchers from the San Diego Veterans Administration Healthcare System and
University of California, San Diego School of Medicine studied 331 patients
undergoing routine outpatient echocardiography to determine whether the
combination of ICG and BNP (b-type natriuretic peptide) testing provided a
useful strategy to identify high-risk patients likely to develop heart
failure-related events.
The patients were followed up to one year for clinical events (emergency
room visits, hospital admissions and cardiac-related deaths). Patients with
left ventricular dysfunction are at a high risk for morbidity and mortality,
and it remains difficult to predict which patients are most likely to have
clinical events.
Echocardiography is considered the gold standard for diagnosis of left
ventricular dysfunction, but its cost, physician office reimbursement
restrictions, and dependency on trained technicians limits availability and
prevents its frequent use.
The study concluded that ICG and BNP testing significantly add to the
ability to risk stratify and predict future heart failure-related events.
The study is important because it demonstrates the additive ability of
ICG when paired with BNP, a common blood test used in heart failure, to
identify patients with a higher likelihood of future heart failure events.
The Company also announced that renowned heart failure specialist, Milton
Packer, M.D., Director, Center for Biostatistics and Clinical Science at the
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and researchers
from over 20 multi-national centers met at the HFSA meeting to finalize the
protocol for the Company's next multi-center heart failure study,
PREVENT-HF. PREVENT-HF is a randomized, controlled trial and is the
follow-on study to the previously reported PREDICT study. The purpose of
PREVENT-HF is to demonstrate whether use of ICG will allow physicians to
intervene earlier and more aggressively in high-risk patients, thereby
reducing heart failure events and cost as compared to standard care.
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