A few weeks ago, Tim Larner was having a tough time. He was always tired and was having a lot of trouble breathing.
"I was in and out of the hospital quite a bit in the last couple of weeks with Afib and having trouble breathing," Larner said.
Larner is one of the roughly 5 million Americans with heart failure.
"The heart isn't pumping efficiently enough so the body isn't getting the oxygen or nutrients that it needs to do daily activities," said Dr. Scott Feitell, Sands Constellation Heart Institute at Rochester General Hospital heart failure director.
Larner's doctor's weren't able to get a good grip on his condition, until a couple weeks ago when they gave him a CardioMEMS HF System, which is a wireless device implanted in the pulmonary artery which transmits pressure changes to show when heart failure is getting worse.
"Pressures going up usually happens before patients are symptomatic," Feitell said. "So the fact that I can see their pressures going up two to three weeks before they become symptomatic, means I can aggressively titrate their medications at home, perhaps add a new medicine to their regimen and really get them feeling better without them ending up in the ER."
Pressures are measured by patients laying on a special pillow that collects the data.
To implant the device, it's a same-day procedure, and patients can even return to work the next day.
"The only way I could get pulmonary artery pressures before this device is someone actually had to come into the hospital and I would have to put a catheter in their body and they would have to be parked in the ICU for monitoring," Feitell said. "So this is really the first thing that allows me to get that kind of data outside the ICU setting."
As for Larner, the data is helping doctors treat him more effectively.
"I feel great. I have more energy," Larner said. "I can eat what I want before I wasn't eating well. Now I can eat and do stuff and go outside and have fun."
Doctors recommend the device for most heart failure patients, except ones who are unable to take blood thinners.
Side effects and risks are similar to any surgery.
Patients should talk to their doctor about whether the CardioMEMS is right for them.