CardioMEMS
RWJBarnabas Health Heart Center at Clara Maass Medical Center
In 2015, Clara Maass Medical Center was the first hospital in Essex County and the first RWJBarnabas Health facility to implant the CardioMEMS System.
What Is CardioMEMS?
The CarioMEMS Heart Failure (HF) System, manufactured by St. Jude Medical,
is the first and only FDA-approved heart failure monitoring device that
has been proven to significantly reduce hospital admissions when used
to help patients manage heart failure. It uses a miniature wireless monitoring
sensor implanted in the Pulmonary Artery (PA), during a non-surgical procedure,
to directly measure blood pressure and heart rate data. Patients can transmit
this data from home to their health care providers, allowing them to stabilize
PA pressure by managing the patient’s medications more effectively.
The CardioMEMS HF System uses a miniaturized, wireless monitoring
sensor (pictured here) that is implanted in the Pulmonary Artery.
What Is Heart Failure?
More than five million Americans and about 26 million people worldwide suffer from heart failure, which occurs when the heart is unable to pump enough blood to the body. When this happens, blood pressure eventually rises, leading to shortness of breath, fatigue, swelling and other symptoms.
Read more about heart failure.
Monitoring PA Pressure for Individuals with Heart Failure
Increased PA pressures appear before weight and blood pressure changes, which are often used as indirect measures of worsening heart failure. This provides clinicians with the ability to detect worsening heart failure up to 21 days prior to other symptoms appearing, allowing for earlier intervention to preventer worsening heart failure.
How It Works: An Overview
The CardioMEMS HF sensor is implanted in the PA on the right side of the
heart through a catheter placed in the patient’s groin. The entire
procedure takes less than an hour and most patients go home same day.
Once the sensor is implanted, it immediately begins to monitor PA pressures.
To transmit date each day, patients simply position themselves on a special
pillow provided by CardioMEMS and follow verbal instructions given by
the electronic system. The entire process takes less than one minute.
The CardioMEMS transmitter and pillow.