Transcoronary Myocardial Cooling
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A safety and feasibility study of transcoronary myocardial buffering - cooling during primary coronary angioplasty to reduce myocardial reperfusion injury in acute myocardial infarction.
IRAS ID
141940
Contact name
Miles Dalby
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust
Research summary
Patients with heart attacks caused by blocked coronary arteries are usually treated with a technique called primary angioplasty. This involves passing a tube (catheter) through an artery to the heart then passing a thin wire across the blockage and the placement of a device called a stent which is a small metal tube that keeps the artery open. Although this treatment is very successful it can result in damage to the heart muscle when the artery is opened. Cooling the entire body has been shown to reduce heart muscle damage during heart attacks in some patients but not in others, however it is uncomfortable due to the shivering, expensive and can result in delays in opening the blocked artery. We propose a simpler way to cool the heart muscle directly using cooled fluid passed through the catheter without the shortcomings of entire body cooling.
Goal of research
Our goal is to assess whether cooling the heart directly at the time of unblocking the coronary artery- primary angioplasty is feasible and safe. We also wish to study the effects of this method on the level of muscle damage.
Potential benefit of research
If direct cooling of the heart muscle is found to be feasible and safe, this method will be tested further in a larger study. This will be the first study of its kind to investigate this new method of cooling the heart, and if it proves successful it could potentially be widely and easily taken up for all primary angioplasty procedures with significant reduction in heart attack size and therefore benefit to patients. We will use fluid at room teperature in the first five patients before moving on to using cooled fluid in the final five patients.
REC name
London - Brent Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/0476
Date of REC Opinion
15 Apr 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion