First Heart Failure Patient Treated With Impulse Dynamics’ CCM Therapy in Brazil

Impulse Dynamics, a company dedicated to helping healthcare providers improve the lives of people with heart failure, has announced the first patient in Brazil was treated with its innovative CCM therapy delivered by the Optimizer system. The patient was treated by Dr. Edvaldo Xavier, cardiologist at Santa Casa de Maceió in Maceió, Alagoas.
 
“It was with enormous satisfaction that we were able to perform the first Optimizer Smart CCM implant in Brazil, a new therapy for eligible patients with heart failure,” said Dr. Xavier. “The implantation of the CCM device was relatively simple, without any major difficulties and the patient reported an improvement in symptoms the next morning. It’s our hope that this procedure opens the doors for other centers in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America to begin implanting the Optimizer Smart, bringing hope to heart failure patients for a better quality of life and fewer cardiovascular events. We are extremely satisfied with the support provided by i2Medi Comercial Medica, and we’re hopeful we can perform more implants, making our patients happy and enabling our medical team to provide positive results with this therapy.”
 
The Optimizer delivers cardiac contractility modulation therapy, the company’s proprietary technology, to the heart. CCM therapy is the first approach of its kind designed to improve contraction of the heart, allowing more oxygen-rich blood to reach the body.¹ CCM therapy delivers precisely timed electrical pulses to the heart during the absolute refractory period of the beating cycle, just after the heart contracts. This breakthrough technology has the potential to improve the quality of life for patients who are no longer adequately responding to medications to manage their symptoms or slow the progression of their condition.¹
 
“We are delighted to offer CCM therapy to the healthcare community in Brazil,” said Dr. Mateusz Zelewski, vice president of International Sales at Impulse Dynamics. “Heart failure is a global health issue impacting millions of patients with symptoms that massively disrupt their daily lives. Our breakthrough technology enables physicians to make a positive impact on the lives of their patients. For many patients, it’s a desperately needed reason for them to feel hopeful again. The excitement for the first patient in Brazil adds to the continued enthusiasm we’ve seen from patients and providers all over the world as CCM therapy becomes available to them.”
 
The Optimizer device is similar in size to a pacemaker and is implanted during a minimally invasive procedure while the patient is under light sedation. It has been used to treat over 5,000 patients and is currently available in the United States, Europe, China, Brazil, India and more than 40 other countries around the world.
 
Reference 
¹ Abraham WT, Kuck KH, Goldsmith RL, et al. A randomized controlled trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of cardiac contractility modulation. JACC Heart Failure. 6(10), 874-883 (2018).