March 12, 2007
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Contact: Marla Paul at (312) 503-8928 or at |
$15M Grant Will Fund Study of Pacemaker/Beta Blocker Effect on Heart Patients
CHICAGO—An estimated 100,000 patients who have heart attacks each year are not eligible for life-saving beta-blocker drug therapy because their heart rates are too low. Beta-blockers improve survival rates up to 30 percent in people who have had heart attacks by helping to regulate the heartbeat.
Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine has received a $15 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to conduct a national study investigating whether implanting a pacemaker in low-heart rate, heart-attack patients—which will enable them to take beta-blockers—will also improve survival.
Jeffrey J. Goldberger, MD, professor of medicine at the Feinberg School and director of cardiac electrophysiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, is the national principal investigator of the multicenter, randomized clinical research study. The five-year study will enroll 1,124 participants from around the country.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital is the local site and will enroll 20â30 subjects. Other centers are in 27 states, including Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri.
“The study will also help us determine more precisely how frequently low heart rates are a problem in heart attack patients. The current estimates are 5 to 10 percent of 1.5 million heart attack patients yearly,” Dr. Goldberger said.
Dr. Goldberger noted that most of the study participants will be patients seen in the hospital after a heart attack. The name of the study is the Pace-MI Trial: Pacemaker and Beta-Blocker Therapy after Myocardial Infarction Trial.