EDITORIAL
Optimisation of cardiac resynchronisation therapy: addressing the problem of "non-responders"
1 Manchester Heart Centre, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, UK
2 North West Regional Cardiac Centre, Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr David J Fox
Manchester Heart Centre, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9WL, UK; david.j.fox{at}talk21.com
Cardiac resynchronisation therapy has become firmly established as a treatment for patients with symptomatic heart failure. Several randomised controlled trials and numerous observational studies have demonstrated improvements in exercise capacity and quality of life. Despite these advances it is clear that approximately 25% of patients who meet current criteria for implantation of such a device do not show objective evidence of clinical benefit. Implantation of a CRT device is expensive, time consuming and involves some risk so it is important to accurately identify patients who are likely to respond and to optimise pacing lead placement and device programming to maximise the benefit in these selected patients.
Abbreviations: AV, atrioventricular; CRT, cardiac resynchronisation therapy; LBBB, left bundle branch block; LV, left ventricular; NYHA, New York Heart Association; RBBB, right bundle branch block; TDI, tissue Doppler imaging; VO2max, maximal oxygen uptake
Keywords: heart failure; left bundle branch block; pacing
Read all eLetters
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
eLetters:
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Read responses to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
