There's new hope for patients with a dangerous heart rythem problem. It's a parachute-shaped filtering device that could reduce their risk for a stroke.
It could have been rough seas ahead for bill bowering. He didn't know he had a life-threatening heart rhythm problem, "I didn't really know about A-fib, except there was just an irregular beat. I didn't know there was any serious complications from it."
A-fib, or atrial fibrillation occurs when the upper chambers of the heart beat too fast. "Since this upper chamber is chaotic, blood can clot. And the clots can go to bad places like your head and cause strokes," says cardiologist Dr. Steven Almany.
Now some doctors are using a small device called the Watchman to help prevent those strokes. "What we've done is, we've isolated the area of the heart where we believe over 90% of the clots come from and this device is actually put in that area of the heart and seals off that area so the clots form behind it and never released into the circulation like the brain," says Dr. Almany.
He says, they thread a catheter through a vein in the leg to the part of the heart called the left atrial appendage, "What we're gonna' do is we're gonna get out in the appendage and then this device comes out very slowly, gets into the appendage."
Once in place, the Watchman permanently plugs up the opening to block clots from entering the blood stream. "Over a period of time, the mesh part of it just endothelialize. In other words, tissue grows over it," according to Dr. Almany.
Research suggests the device works as well as standard therapy with coumadin - a blood thinner that can have serious side effects. Bill is happy to have the device, "Being worried about a small cut, bleeding to death, hitting my head and bleeding to death internally, just not being able to live a regular lifestyle."
Researchers aren't yet sure if the Watchman, which keeps clots from traveling, should replace treatment with coumadin, that prevents clots from forming.
