Jimmy McMillan, 69, of West Columbia felt his health growing worse as his heart failure progressed. “I would have trouble just walking down to the mailbox and back without having to stop and catch my breath,” he said. Then McMillan was accepted into a clinical trial at Medical University of South Carolina in 2016, testing a new type of heart device to address his particular kind of heart failure.
Though he was randomized, meaning he had an equal chance of getting the device or a sham treatment as a control, it was pretty apparent to his brother-in-law which one it was when they wheeled McMillan back in after the procedure. “You wouldn’t believe the difference in the color of your face,” he told McMillan. Before, he was pale and “looked like death warmed over,” McMillan was told.
But now, his face was already pinking up. It turned out he did get the device, known as the Corvia Atrial Shunt, which works by helping relieve pressure through a small hole in a wall in the heart. Testing of the device is ongoing at MUSC and around 60 centers in the U.
S., Canada, Europe and Australia. Heart disease is the leading cause of d eath in the U.
S. for both men and women, and it was the top killer in South Carolina, where it claimed 12,210 lives in 2021. Heart failure , the inability of the heart to pump blood adequately as needed, directly causes 8.
5 percent of those deaths, but some estimate it contributes to more than a third of all heart-related deaths. It affects more than.