Cardiac Contractility Monitoring: an Important Therapy in the Treatment of Advanced Heart Failure

Abstract

Purpose of review: This review highlights the mechanisms of action of cardiac contractility modulation (CCM) and the clinical data which supports its use for the appropriate patient population.

Recent findings: CCM has beneficial effects on myocardial calcium handling and reverse remodeling of abnormal genetic programs. Clinical trials show sustained improvements in quality of life, exercise tolerance, and heart failure symptoms. Heart failure is a global epidemic that is expected to increase in prevalence over the coming years. Despite improvements in, and the standardization of, optimal medical therapy (OMT), morbidity and mortality remain unacceptably high, with a 5-year mortality rate of 50%. While more recent advances in device therapies, including chronic resynchronization therapy (CRT), and left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), have changed the care of advanced heart failure for a certain subset of patients, there remains a therapeutic gap in the treatment of patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) who are not candidates for CRT. CCM is a novel device-based therapy which delivers an electrical stimulus during the absolute refractory period and has been shown to improve heart failure symptoms, exercise tolerance, and quality of life.

Keywords: Cardiac contractility modulation; Device therapy; Heart failure.