Pacemaker study excludes drugs to lower high blood pressure

An HonorHealth Research Institute study is using new programming for pacemakers to control high blood pressure without additional drugs.

Dr. Rahul Doshi is leading the “BACKBEAT” clinical trial which aims to use Medtronic’s Astra and Azure model pacemakers to not only treat slow heart rates but also deliver electrical pulses stimulating the heart in a way that reduces the patient’s blood pressure.

Dr. Doshi is an electrophysiologist in the Cardiovascular Research Division of Scottsdale’s HonorHealth Research Institute and joined “Arizona Horizon” to provide more information on this new study.

Pacemakers help slow the heart rate and can also start a heartbeat. The device is extremely beneficial for the lower and upper chambers of the heart. 

“A pacemaker is a fully implantable electronic device that is basically designed to keep people from having slow heart rate and so it’s sort of can you look at your own heart’s electrical activity which coordinates how the heart contracts and then kind of fills in where you don’t. So if you have a tendency for slow heart rates in the upper chambers or slower heart rates in the lower chambers both the device can see that and stimulate the heart to cause a heartbeat,” said Doshi. 

One of the key factors of the pacemaker they are testing at HonorHealth is a correlation between timing and the upper and lower chambers of the heart. 

“The device is a traditional pacemaker so that’s the first part of it. These are for folks that are indicated for pacemaker implantation so they typically have a tendency or have a chronic slow heart rate problem. A pacemaker, all pacemakers coordinate electrical contraction between the upper and lower chambers…the timing between the upper and lower chambers can actually affect someone’s blood pressure…,” said Doshi.