Cardiac resynchronization therapy, or CRT, is a procedure that implants a small device under the skin of the chest. The device helps coordinate the heart’s rhythms. For patients who’ve suffered heart failure and developed arrhythmia, CRT offers a shorter recovery time than more involved heart surgeries, with patients back at home the next day.

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Cardiac resynchronization therapy is a remarkable treatment for people that have a heart condition known as heart failure. We use that term to mean that the heart is not working the way it is supposed to work. And in particular, it usually means that a heart is not pumping out as much blood and as much oxygen to the organs of the body as it should, and as a result, patients have symptoms such as shortness of breath and tiredness and sometimes arrhythmias as well.

Cardiac resynchronization therapy is designed to improve outcomes for these patients, make them feel better, decrease their risk of hospitalizations and help them live longer.

Cardiac resynchronization therapy involves a small incision in the chest, just a couple inches wide, just beneath the collarbone and the device is implanted underneath the skin. As a result, there’s not the typical longer recoveries that you may see with cardiac surgery in which the chest is open. In cardiac resynchronization therapy, all the patients have are a small incision in the skin of their upper chest by the shoulder. This results in a recovery time typically of a few days after the procedure. They’ll go home the next day. During the next few days, we ask them to take it easy. Don’t do a whole lot, get a little rest. But there really isn't much that requires recovery other than that after the procedure.

We offer patients a fantastic followup program including assessment of their functional capacity and heart function in symptoms at 6 months, then 12 months after the procedure. This followup program includes optimization of the device through programming. You can also, via computer, program the timing of pacing impulses to occur in different ways through the device. It makes a difference how you time the pacing impulses, and this requires expertise and is something that we offer here at UVA.