New pacemaker being tested in NZ
A pacemaker helps regulate the heart's natural rhythm.
A new pacemaker being tested in New Zealand could help patients experiencing heart failure feel and move better.
The device has been designed to copy the heart's natural rhythm, speeding up and slowing down in sync with breathing.
The first trial patient got one at Waikato Hospital just before Christmas last year.
Dr Martin Styles, a cardiologist at the hospital and professor at Auckland University's Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, is overseeing the trial.
The new pacemaker showed promising results in a study with sheep with heart failure, he said.
The university tested whether a sheep's ability to exercise was improved by a variable heart pacemaker.
Sheep's heart functions are similar to humans.
"Sheep with this respiratory variability pacing had an increase in their cardiac output by 23 percent compared to the sheep who were paced in the normal fashion. This is a dramatic increase in cardiac output," Stiles said.
"Furthermore, what we've shown is that those sheep are fitter so that they can exercise more and their heart rate recovers much quicker than the sheep that have the other sort of pacing."
Auckland, Australian cities Adelaide, Melbourne and Bristol in the United Kingdom were other potential centres for trials, he said.
"Once we get these trials under way, we hope to roll it out more widely, initially probably in patients who are receiving pacemakers anyway, who have heart failure.
"But ultimately, perhaps it might be a treatment on its own, that is to say if someone doesn't need a pacemaker, this could be a reason to put one in," he said.
"We've been talking to some of the larger pacemaker companies about trying to take on this technology and develop it with us.
"Once you have one of these technologies getting it out to the wider world is challenging, but we're hopeful we can and we're really proud to be doing this in New Zealand, leading it from New Zealand."
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