Implantable heart defibrillator shows survival benefits

Patients who received an implantable heart defibrillator in everyday practice saw survival benefits when compared with those who obtained them as part of carefully controlled clinical trials.

This is one of the findings of a new study led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute, which was published in the January 2nd Journal of the American Medical Association, using data from a national Medicare registry to observe the survival of those who use the equipment.

Implantable carrdioverter-defibrilators in particular have been proven to be effective for those with a history of cardiac arrest or heart failure. The devices feature small electrical units positioned in the chest, along with wires leading to the heart that send an electronic pulse when it stops beating.

Thanks to this process, the heart is then able to regain a normal rhythm.

Lead Author Sana M Al-Khatib, an electrophysiologist and member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, admitted that many people questioned how clinical trial results apply to patients in routine practice.

"We showed that patients in real-world practice who receive a defibrillator but who are most likely not monitored at the same level provided in clinical trials have similar survival outcomes compared to patients who received a defibrillator in the clinical trials," she continued.

However, Ms Al-Khatib said that the study did have limitations, admitting that by eliminating Medicare patients who were older and sicker than those taking part in the trials, it was impossible to judge how those seen in real-world practice fare in comparison to people chosen for the research.

"That is in an issue, and the only way to get at that is to randomly assign such patients to either receive an ICD or not in a clinical trial," she explained.

In recent months, researchers from the Karolina Institute in Sweden found that patients using common pharma drugs saw a 10 per cent decrease in their mortality rate.

The results indicated that patients with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) who used these treatments to lower blood pressure had a higher survival rate in comparison to those who tried other drugs.

Posted by Ben Evans