Now heart failure patients can also lead a normal life!
With the increasing number of cardiovascular patients, the number of heart failure is increasing. The HVAD® System allows heart failure programmes to treat a broad range of patients, improve patient survival and patient quality of life. This makes the HVAD System the choice for heart failure programmes around the world.
Heart failure is usually considered an end stage cardiovascular diseases. But Dr Lim Chong Hee, an Associate Professor and Senior Consultant at the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) explains that how the third generation ventricular assist device can help a patient with heart failure and some other diseases.
Dr Hee, who is also the Director of Heart/Lung Transplant Programme, says that heart failure is the new epidemic in cardiology because we are facing an aging population. As people age, chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol affect the heart condition of patients.
He showed the statistics that 1.8-4.5% people are affected by heart failure. This means about more than 6000 new cases per year with 5000 admissions in the hospital. This will continue to grow resulting in repeated hospital admissions by the patients. He mentioned that the most common causes for heart disease are ischemic heart disease and cardio-myopathy.
The HeartWare Ventricular Assist System (HVAD) is used in advance stage of ventricular heart failure. Dr Hee mentioned that the third generation device is very convenient to place as it is smaller than that of first and second generation device.
The device is inserted by a minimally invasive surgery with the assistance of heart-lung machine.
HeartWare Ventricular Assist System (HVAD):
The HeartWare Ventricular Assist System (HVAD) is an investigational, implanted, continuous flow, centrifugal left-sided heart pump that is being offered through a randomised, multicenter study for patients needing long term support with a device for destination therapy.
Patient are likely to recover staying in the hospital for about 7-10 days. So far NHCS has performed more than half century procedures of HVAD and the number is increasing day by day.
You can watch the video http://youtu.be/YPG3XgJo4H4 to learn more how the device works. For more information please visit www.heartware.com.
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