Combination implant appears to help more heart failure patients

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 22:28 in Health & Medicine

The CRT-D, part automated defibrillator, part cardiac resynchronization device, reduced hospitalizations in milder cases. But issues including cost have some questioning how widely it should be used. An implantable device that shocks an erratically beating heart and works to keep both ventricles of the heart beating synchronously reduced hospitalizations for heart failure by 41%, according to results reported Tuesday at the European Society...