Understanding ECP Heart Care

First, the patient lies on a comfortable but specially designed treatment bed.  Blood pressure style cuffs are wrapped snuggly around the calves, thighs and pelvis.  The technician then attaches standard EKG electrodes to the patient’s chest to monitor the heart rhythm so that the inflation and deflation of the cuffs can be precisely timed with the heart beat.  A properly timed pulse of pressure is sent through the major veins of the legs to the heart which is timed to arrive at the heart at the exact time when the heart chambers are normally filling with blood, which is exactly the time when the hearts own feeder arteries are also filling. This extra pulse of blood further stretches both the heart muscle and the heart arteries which stimulates certain chemical reactions within those arteries not just in the heart but all over the body to literally, over time, stimulate the growth of new blood vessels, which are called collaterals that interconnect all the circulation.

It would then be the enlarging network of collateral blood vessels that would bring extra blood into relatively blood starved areas of the heart as a consequence of critical blockages in the main arteries.  In addition, this extra “stretching” of the heart muscle and arteries with that extra pulse of pressure helps to improve the elasticity or “stretch” of the heart muscle and arteries allowing them to work more effectively.  One of the most common causes of heart failure is a so called “Diastolic Dysfunction” which basically is a stiff heart muscle that acts like rubber that’s been sitting in the sun too long.  If the muscle cannot stretch enough to allow a proper volume of blood to get into the pumping chamber then, if bad enough, a person can develop heart failure even if they’ve never had a heart attack before. Regardless, this is easy to figure out if it is happening and another reason for why ECP has been approved also by the FDA specifically for its use in heart failure related to coronary artery disease.  And there is nothing else available other than ECP that has the ability to improve the heart and arteries’ stretchability, otherwise known as elasticity.  There are currently no medications available today that have any effect on this “stiff heart muscle” problem.