New pacemaker helping heart failure patients

ATLANTA - Researchers say heart failure victims who get a new kind of pacemaker have only half the usual risk of being hospitalized with worsening heart trouble. <br> <br> The device, Medtronic&#39;s InSync pacemaker, has been implanted in more than three thousand people in the United States since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in August. <br> <br> It is intended for people with a particular form of heart failure, a debilitating illness in which people suffer shortness of breath because their hearts do not beat strongly enough. Overall, an estimated five million Americans have heart failure, and it is considered to be the only major form of heart trouble that is growing in prevalence. <br> <br> Dr. David Meyerson of Johns Hopkins University, a spokesman for the American Heart Association, estimates that ten percent of heart failure patients whose symptoms are not relieved by medicines could benefit from the new pacemakers. <br> <br> The latest data on the pacemaker was released Monday by Dr. William Abraham of the University of Kentucky at a meeting in Atlanta of the American College of Cardiology.

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