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Study Examines New Blood Pressure Treatment

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Your kidneys, your brain, your heart -- they can't take uncontrolled high blood pressure. It can lead to heart attacks and strokes. In fact, 19 million Americans have poorly controlled blood pressure, even with medication.

But when medicine isn't enough to control blood pressure, what else is there?

Local doctors are studying a new approach -- an implanted device that harnesses the body's own blood pressure control systems. This would be for people whose blood pressure is hard to control and Pittsburgh seems to be the perfect place.

"We have more elderly patients here," says Dr. Srinivas Murali of the Cardiovascular Institute at Allegheny General Hospital. "People here tend not to follow diets and be diligent about their health."

This nationwide study is looking for about 300 people, including 10 people from the greater Pittsburgh area. Participants must have high blood pressure, even when taking more than one medicine for the problem. And they can't have other major illnesses, like cancer, or previous surgery on the carotid arteries.

The device, the size of a pacermaker, is surgically placed in the upper chest during a four-hour procedure. By the flip of a coin, patients get a device that's turned on or turned off. Neither the patients nor their doctors will know which group they're in. Blood pressures will be compared between the two groups.

Dr. Murali says because the vessels involved give the brain its blood supply, expertise is very important. "[The surgery] needs to be done by a surgeon who is familiar with the carotid vascualture. Typically these are vascular surgeons."

Electrodes from the device are hooked up to the body's own blood pressure sensor -- specialized nerve endings, called baroreceptors, located in the major neck vessels, the carotid arteries. The baroreceptors then send signals to the heart, brain, blood vessels, and kidneys to control blood pressure.

"We should start seeing lowering of blood pressure as early as a day or two, and certainly by a week," says Dr. Murali.

Like many implanted devices, they don't last forever.  But just how long they'll last hasn't been figured out.

"We haven't come that far yet," Dr. Murali adds. "It's relatively new technology. As most pacemakers go, they're good for several years."

In European studies, the device is safe and has lowered blood pressure, but there's no information about whether it actually reduces strokes, heart attacks, or death.

Since it's in research right now, and not yet FDA approved, it's not available to the public outside of the study.

Study patients are followed monthly for a year.

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