Home | Transcriptions of Videos

If Vaso-Meditech EECP treatment not improved my Ejection Fraction (EF) does that mean I have not benefitted from EECP?

Download Interview Transcript (English)

Synopsis

In some patient with heart failure who have poor pumping function or low ejection fraction who has undergone 35 days of EECP treatment, some times their EF might not improve.  The common question here is the patient asking the doctor my EF has not improve after 35 days of EECP treatment am i benefitted from this treatment or not?  Actually, when you were assessing the patient improvement after EECP treatment, EF is only a part of an assessment it's not an entire assessment of post EECP improvement.  The patients should focus on the quality of life and see whether, after 35 days of EECP treatment, there exercise time; their sleep pattern, their appetite, chest pain, shortness of breath all has improved or not.

So once these function which we call as the quality is improved, this patient indeed has improved with EECP. EECP function is not only to improve the myocardial contraction and improve the heart pumping function but also improve the entire vascular system function. EECP can help the blood vessels to dilate so that the blood flow can be improved not only in the heart muscle but into various other organs.  So just because they don't have an improvement in the heart pumping function, it doesn't mean that these patient has not benefitted from EECP they do have got the benefit from EECP.  Because the heart muscle is dead, it has failed to show improvement in the contraction or the ejection fraction.