EECP

• by SMITTY
• 2009-02-18 09:02:45
• General Posting
• 876 views
• 1 comments

Hey Folks,

Any of you had EECP treatment. I am to undergo this in one or two weeks (or as soon as they can get me scheduled for the treatment).

In case any of you are like and your first question is what it that, below is a small portion of the blurb I have on this procedure.

Thanks,

Smitty



What is EECP?

1. EECP is a mechanical procedure in which long inflatable cuffs (like blood pressure cuffs) are wrapped around both of the patient’s legs. While the patient lies on a bed, the leg cuffs are inflated and deflated with each heartbeat. This is accomplished by means of a computer, which triggers off the patient’s ECG so that the cuffs deflate just as each heartbeat begins, and inflate just as each heartbeat ends. When the cuffs inflate they do so in a sequential fashion, so that the blood in the legs is “milked” upwards, toward the heart.

EECP has two potentially beneficial actions on the heart. First, the milking action of the leg cuffs increases the blood flow to the coronary arteries. (The coronary arteries, unlike other arteries in the body, receive their blood flow after each heartbeat instead of during each heartbeat. EECP, effectively, “pumps” blood into the coronary arteries.) Second, by its deflating action just as the heart begins to beat, EECP creates something like a sudden vacuum in the arteries, which reduces the work of the heart muscle in pumping blood into the arteries. Both of these actions have long been known to reduce cardiac ischemia (the lack of oxygen to the heart muscle) in patients with coronary artery disease.