CardioMEMS™ HF System

Your heart is considered the hardest working muscle in your body. For most people, the heart beats about 100,000 times a day. Imagine that.

So, it’s understandable that sometimes, your heart may need a little help to do its job. If you have heart failure, medications, lifestyle and new technology can go a long way to help keep the heart pumping along.

Today, your team of highly specialized healthcare providers at the Institute for Congestive Heart Failure at Abrazo Arizona Heart Hospital can add technology to the mix to ensure you’re getting the best treatment available. It is part of the compassionate, personalized care any patient diagnosed with heart disease, heart failure or arrhythmia will receive.

One such innovation at Abrazo Arizona Heart Hospital is a new implantable device called the CardioMEMS™ HF System that can alert providers of possible problems in your heart even before you’re showing outward symptoms of heart failure. This could keep you out of the hospital to better help you live your life.

This technology involves having an electronic sensor as tiny as a paper clip implanted in your pulmonary artery. After being implanted, the device can detect small changes in pressures (which can indicate worsening heart failure) and sends them electronically to your interventional cardiologist or electrophysiologist. This allows your interventional cardiologist or electrophysiologist to make any needed adjustments to your treatment plan or medications. Patients whose clinicians used CardioMEMS™ actually had fewer hospitalizations than those patients who did not.

Obtaining the CardioMEMS™ device requires only an outpatient procedure. With no batteries or connecting wires, insertion is minimally invasive.

You may receive a mild sedative for the implantation. You will be constantly monitored by a nurse as the doctor inserts the device.

Your interventional cardiologist or electrophysiologist will insert a catheter into your femoral vein. Using a fluoroscope as a guide, your interventional cardiologist or electrophysiologist will thread the catheter through your vein to your heart and into your pulmonary artery. When the catheter is placed, the interventional cardiologist or electrophysiologist will release the CardioMEMS™ device – the sensor – into your artery.

Typically, after a few hours in the recovery room to monitor you, you may be able to return home. With only mild discomfort at the groin site, you should be able to return to normal activities soon.

You’ll also receive an at-home monitor. Once a day, you’ll use it to take pressure readings of your artery. The information is wirelessly sent to your healthcare provider. It’s painless, and very simple. In fact, you’ll never feel the sensor.

Healthcare providers will access your readings to help manage your care. But even more importantly, automated alerts will be sent to your healthcare providers.

The sensor can provide peace of mind. Just know, Abrazo wants to help your heart keep doing the hard work it’s meant to do for years to come.