Electrical pulses to the carotid artery help improve exercise capacity and reduce symptoms like shortness of breath and fatigue.
The vascular surgery team at UCSF Health recently became the first among University of California medical centers to implant a Barostim device to treat heart failure. The team implanted the device in a young woman with the goal of reducing her heart failure symptoms and improving her quality of life.
Barostim is a new, FDA-approved, implantable device that rebalances the autonomic nervous system, with the goal of improving outcomes for heart failure patients with reduced ejection fraction.
The device works by electrically stimulating baroreceptors with Baroreflex Activation Therapy (BAT) in the carotid artery, which helps regulate blood flow and reduce the stress response associated with heart failure. This, in turn, can improve exercise capacity and reduce symptoms like shortness of breath and fatigue.
The surgery team, led by Clara Gomez-Sanchez, MD, assistant professor of surgery in the division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, performed the surgery earlier this summer. Since then, the patient reports increased energy levels and is able to walk outside 45 minutes per day. She is looking forward to lifting weights, doing her own grocery shopping, and being actively involved in her children’s activities.
“We selected the patient for this novel treatment as a way to comprehensively treat her heart failure,” said Liviu Klein, MD,MS, a cardiologist and director of UCSF’s Advanced Heart Failure Comprehensive Care Center. “We are seeing positive results from the device in this patient already.”
Recent data for BAT showed 94% of Barostim patients had significant improvement in at least one of three measures of symptom improvement — quality of life, exercise capacity, or heart failure symptoms — as well as a 25% reduction in NT-proBNP (a biomarker used in diagnosing and assessing heart failure) and a 34% reduction in the risk of progression to needing an LVAD, a heart transplant or dying.
Additionally, 97% of patients reported no complications from Barostim implantation and almost three times greater improvement in quality-of-life scores than patients on medications alone.
The implant procedure typically takes about an hour, and most patients go home the same day. Patients who are eligible for the therapy are identified either in-patient or outpatient by their clinicians, and once implanted with the Barostim device, they are managed by the heart failure cardiology team at Advanced Heart Failure Comprehensive Care Center.
About UCSF Health: UCSF Health is recognized worldwide for its innovative patient care, reflecting the latest medical knowledge, advanced technologies and pioneering research. It includes the flagship UCSF Medical Center, which is a top-ranked specialty hospital, as well as UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, with campuses in San Francisco and Oakland; Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics; UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians; and the UCSF Faculty Practice. These hospitals serve as the academic medical center of the University of California, San Francisco, which is world-renowned for its graduate-level health sciences education and biomedical research. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. Visit http://www.ucsfhealth.org/. Follow UCSF Health on Facebook or on Threads.
