EECP of Chicago - EECP for Patients

If you have already read about coronary heart disease and angina, you now know that angina is the name for the dominant symptom occurring when the heart does not receive adequate blood and oxygen to meet its needs. This mismatch of blood-oxygen supply and demand is the direct result of coronary atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries of the heart), the end result of which may be a heart attack, congestive heart failure, and possibly even death.

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The modern treatment of angina is multifaceted, involving dietary management to lose weight and lower cholesterol, medical therapy to control blood pressure and diabetes, smoking cessation, aerobic exercise, various anti-anginal medications, bypass surgery, and coronary angioplasty. In the later stages of angina, after bypass surgery has been performed once, or several times, after angioplasty has been tried, and tried again, and heart pains recur, in spite of several anti-anginal medications, a patient could only look forward to a life of extreme activity limitation. However, there is now a new, fully tested, and Medicare approved therapy for such late stage angina Enhanced External Counterpulsation—EECP^®.
EECP^® is a new, noninvasive, outpatient treatment, which, when applied over a course of time, reduces angina frequency, improves a persons exercise capacity, and may even result in reduced need for medications. EECP^® is not a replacement for bypass surgery or angioplasty, but is an additional treatment for those patients who can no longer benefit from additional surgery or angioplasty, and for whom medical therapy has already been maximized.
The initial course of EECP^® therapy involves 35 consecutive one hour sessions. During an EECP^® clinic visit, a patient lies on a comfortable bed and has blood pressure-type cuffs wrapped around his or her calves and thighs. Cardiac monitoring wires are attached to the patients chest to record the heart beat, and then the EECP^® pumping console rapidly inflates and deflates the leg cuffs in time with the heart beat. The immediate result of this pumping is to dramatically improve blood flow back into the heart while simultaneously reducing the heart's workload.
The now famous, randomized, double-blinded, placebo controlled MUST-EECP study, conducted at major university centers including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, showed that approximately 80% of patients undergoing a course of EECP^® had sustained clinical benefit one year later.
EECP^® therapy is now available at EECP of Chicago. If you, or a loved one, is in need of this exciting new treatment, call your doctor. For a more detailed explanation about EECP^® view our online video presentation and for any specific questions about EECP^®, click here to contact EECP of Chicago.