PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Study shows how to reduce inappropriate shocks from implanted defibrillators

2012-11-07
(Press-News.org) MAYWOOD, Il. - Loyola University Medical Center is among the centers participating in a landmark study that could lead to fewer inappropriate shocks from implanted defibrillators.

Implanted defibrillators save lives by shocking hearts back into a normal rhythm. But sometimes a defibrillator can go off when it's not necessary, delivering a shock that feels like a kick in the chest.

The study found that reprogramming defibrillators to be less sensitive to irregular heart rhythms reduced the number of inappropriate shocks, while also reducing mortality. The study was presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions and is being published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Inappropriate shocks can be painful and psychologically traumatic to patients," said cardiologist Dr. Peter Santucci, medical director of Loyola's Implant Device Program. "It's important to reduce these shocks, and results of this study will help us to do this, while also potentially improving patients' survival."

Santucci enrolled Loyola patients in the multi-center international trial. Dr. David Wilber, director of Loyola's Cardiovascular Institute, is a co-author of the paper.

The trial is known as MADIT-RIT (Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial - Reduce Inappropriate Therapy.) First author is Dr. Arthur J. Moss of the University of Rochester Medical Center.

An implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) is about the size of a pocket watch, and is implanted below the collarbone. Wire leads connect to the heart. The device is designed to protect against tachyarrhythimas -- quivering, superfast heartbeats that prevent the heart from pumping blood effectively.

When the heart goes into a tachyarrhythimia, the ICD's pacemaker is activated. If the pacemaker fails to restore a normal rhythm, the ICD then delivers a powerful electric shock that jolts the heart back into a normal rhythm. But previous research, cited in the new paper, found that ICDs are inappropriately activated in between 8 percent and 40 percent of patients.

Under conventional programming, an ICD may be activated if the heart beats 170 to 199 beats per minute for 2.5 seconds or at least 200 beats per minute for 1 second. If the heart rate does not slow within 5 to 10 seconds, a shock may be delivered.

The study included 1,500 patients, who were randomly assigned to three groups. The first group had ICDs with conventional programming. In the second group, the ICDs would not activate unless the heart beat at least 200 beats per minute. In the third group, the ICDs were programmed to have longer delays before activation (for example, 60 seconds delay when the heart beats 170 to 199 beats per minute).

After an average follow-up of 1.4 years, patients in the second group had a 79 percent reduction in first-time inappropriate ICD activation. Patients in the third group had a 76 percent reduction in first-time inappropriate activation.

There was a 55 percent reduction in deaths in the second group and a 44 percent reduction in deaths in the third group. ###

Wilber is a professor and Santucci is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Researchers explore connection between popular pain relievers, bladder cancer

2012-11-07
(Lebanon, NH, 11/5/2012) — Dartmouth researchers have found that duration of ibuprofen use was associated with a reduced risk of bladder cancer in patients in northern New England, which has a high mortality rate of this disease. In a 2012 collaborative project with the National Cancer Institute, Margaret Karagas, PhD, co-director, Cancer Epidemiology & Chemoprevention program at Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and Professor of Community and Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and Richard Waddell, D.Sc, Research Assistant Professor of Medicine at ...

New drug target found for cystic fibrosis lung disease

2012-11-07
Vancouver researchers have discovered the cellular pathway that causes lung-damaging inflammation in cystic fibrosis (CF), and that reducing the pathway's activity also decreases inflammation. The finding offers a potential new drug target for treating CF lung disease, which is a major cause of illness and death for people with CF. "Developing new drugs that target lung inflammation would be a big step forward," says Dr. Stuart Turvey, who led the research. Dr. Turvey is the director of clinical research and senior clinician scientist at the Child & Family Research Institute ...

How butterfly wings can inspire new high-tech surfaces

How butterfly wings can inspire new high-tech surfaces
2012-11-07
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A South American butterfly flapped its wings, and caused a flurry of nanotechnology research to happen in Ohio. Researchers here have taken a new look at butterfly wings and rice leaves, and learned things about their microscopic texture that could improve a variety of products. For example, the researchers were able to clean up to 85 percent of dust off a coated plastic surface that mimicked the texture of a butterfly wing, compared to only 70 percent off a flat surface. In a recent issue of the journal Soft Matter, the Ohio State University engineers ...

DNA sequencing of infants and children with anatomical defects of unknown causes

2012-11-07
A presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting updated genetics experts about a one-year-old research initiative that brought together researchers, clinicians and policy experts to tackle the challenges of incorporating new genomic technologies into clinical care of newborns, infants and children with anatomical defects whose causes are unknown. Among the challenges is interpreting how variations in patients' DNA cause or contribute to their medical problems, said Duke University Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Erica E. Davis, Ph.D., who presented ...

Humans, chimpanzees and monkeys share DNA but not gene regulatory mechanisms

2012-11-07
Humans share over 90% of their DNA with their primate cousins. The expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that help explain each species' distinct biology and behavior. DNA factors that contribute to the differences were described on Nov. 6 at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting in a presentation by Yoav Gilad, Ph.D., associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago. Dr. Gilad reported that up to 40% of the differences in the expression or activity patterns of genes between humans, chimpanzees and rhesus ...

New method helps link genomic variation to protein production

2012-11-07
Scientists have adopted a novel laboratory approach for determining the effect of genetic variation on the efficiency of the biological process that translates a gene's DNA sequence into a protein, such as hemoglobin, according to a presentation, Nov. 6, at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting in San Francisco. In the 0.1% of the DNA that differs between any two individuals, scientists search for the biological mechanisms underlying human genetic differences, including disease susceptibility. "How exactly these slight changes in the DNA affect the biology ...

Strong tobacco control policies in Brazil credited for more than 400,000 lives saved

Strong tobacco control policies in Brazil credited for more than 400,000 lives saved
2012-11-07
WASHINGTON – High cigarette prices, smoke-free air laws, marketing restrictions and other measures, all part of Brazil's strong tobacco control policies, are credited for a 50 percent reduction in smoking prevalence between 1989 and 2010. The reduction contributed to an estimated 420,000 lives saved during that time period. Those are the findings of a new study published today in PLOS Medicine by a team of researchers from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Brazilian National Cancer Institute. Adding to the dramatic conclusion of the study, which ...

Regular physical activity increases life expectancy even if overweight

2012-11-07
People who do regular physical activity, such as brisk walking, live longer than those who don't do any leisure time exercise, even when overweight, reports a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. These findings are important because, according to the authors (led by Steven Moore from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, USA): "This finding may help convince currently inactive persons that a modest physical activity program is ''worth it'' for health benefits, even if it may not result in weight control." The researchers from ...

Anti-tobacco policies responsible for Brazil's big success in reducing smoking rates

2012-11-07
Smoking rates in Brazil have dropped by half over the past two decades thanks to strict tobacco control policies, according to a study by US and Brazilian researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Using a modeling simulation study called Brazil SimSmoke, the authors from authors from Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center of Georgetown University in Washington DC and the Brazilian National Cancer Institute in Rio de Janeiro, calculated that 46% of the reduction in smoking rates between 1989 and 2010 (34.8% of Brazilian adults smoked in 1989 compared to 18.5% in ...

China health system reform needs more accountability

2012-11-07
In this week's PLOS Medicine, David Hipgrave from the University of Melbourne, Australia and colleagues discuss health system reform in China and argue that parallel reforms in governance, financing, and accountability are also needed to ensure health equity. ### Funding: No specific funding was received to write this article. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The opinions expressed in this paper reflect the perspectives of the authors alone, and may not be inferred to represent the position of their parent institutions. Citation: ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Mysterious ‘Dark Dwarfs’ may be hiding at the heart of the Milky Way

Real-world data shows teclistamab can benefit many multiple myeloma patients who would have been ineligible for pivotal trial

Scientists reveal how a key inflammatory molecule triggers esophageal muscle contraction

Duration of heat waves accelerating faster than global warming

New mathematical insights into Lagrangian turbulence

Clinical trials reveal promising alternatives to high-toxicity tuberculosis drug

Artificial solar eclipses in space could shed light on Sun

Probing the cosmic Dark Ages from the far side of the Moon

UK hopes to bolster space weather forecasts with Europe's first solar storm monitor

Can one video change a teen's mindset? New study says yes - but there’s a catch

How lakes connect to groundwater critical for resilience to climate change, research finds

Youngest basaltic lunar meteorite fills nearly one billion-year gap in Moon’s volcanic history

Cal Poly Chemistry professor among three U.S. faculty to be honored for contributions to chemistry instruction

Stoichiometric crystal shows promise in quantum memory

Study sheds light on why some prostate tumors are resistant to treatment

Tree pollen reveals 150,000 years of monsoon history—and a warning for Australia’s northern rainfall

Best skin care ingredients revealed in thorough, national review

MicroRNA is awarded an Impact Factor Ranking for 2024

From COVID to cancer, new at-home test spots disease with startling accuracy

Now accepting submissions: Special Collection on Cognitive Aging

Young adult literature is not as young as it used to be

Can ChatGPT actually “see” red? New results of Google-funded study are nuanced

Turning quantum bottlenecks into breakthroughs

Cancer-fighting herpes virus shown to be an effective treatment for some advanced melanoma

Eliminating invasive rats may restore the flow of nutrients across food chain networks in Seychelles

World’s first: Lithuanian scientists’ discovery may transform OLED technology and explosives detection

Rice researchers develop superstrong, eco-friendly materials from bacteria

Itani studying translation potential of secure & efficient software updates in industrial internet of things architectures

Elucidating the source process of the 2021 south sandwich islands tsunami earthquake

Zhu studying use of big data in verification of route choice models

[Press-News.org] Study shows how to reduce inappropriate shocks from implanted defibrillators