Stem Cell Therapy Improves Failing Hearts

An important study has found that patients with advanced heart failure improved significantly after receiving injections of stem cells. The results were reported at the annual meeting of the International Society for Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery in New York (NY, USA) in June 2005.

Thirty days after receiving the human fetal-derived stem cells by injection into their hearts, patients improved an average of 41% in their hearts' pumping efficiency, and the distance they could walk nonstop increased by 72%. After 90 days, the heart-pumping improvements were sustained, and patients further improved the distance they could walk by an additional 16%.

The procedure was performed by Drs. Federico Benetti, Luis Geffner, Yuliy Baltaytis, and Teodoro Maldonado at Luis Vermaza Hospital in Guayaquil (Ecuador). Ten patients with advanced-stage heart failure underwent open chest surgery during which the stem cells were injected into their hearts. The stem cells were provided by the Institute for Regnerative Medicine (St. John, Barbardos). One patient who had a stroke three days after the surgery dropped out of the study, and another patient who failed to follow-up was excluded from the analysis, leaving eight patients in the study.

"This is the first-ever study to use human fetal-derived stem cell therapy in patients with heart failure and, though from a small group of patients, the results are very compelling and demand additional research,” observed senior investigator Valavanur Subramanian, M.D., chairman of the department of cardiothoracic surgery, Lenox Hill Hospital (New York, NY, USA). "It was especially gratifying to see these patients, many of whom couldn't walk more than a short distance without losing their breath, improve their ability to perform physical activities that are a part of everyday living.”




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