Cardiac Arrhythmia clinical trials at University of California Health

Advanced heart failure, affecting 7 million Americans, has multiple causes and results in greatly increased risk of disability and death. A major problem is sudden cardiac death, when the damaged heart develops an abnormal pattern of electrical conduction that can result in cessation of heart activity. While placement of an Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD) in a patient's chest can help prevent sudden cardiac death, these devices have several important downsides. This protocol focuses on development of a digital decision aid that helps heart failure patients make informed decisions that balance the benefits and downsides of ICD placement. This protocol covers the use of participant surveys, focus groups, and interviews to obtain the needed background information to guide the development of this digital tool, which will be subsequently tested against usual care in a randomized clinical trial. The study design is best described as a mixed methods evaluation and refinement of a digital app to improve ICD decision-making. In the future, the present protocol will be modified to create a new protocol that covers the needed human subjects requirements for performance of this clinical trial.

The PRIMARY trial (NCT05051033), which compares mitral valve repair (MVr) to transcatheter-edge-to-edge-repair (TEER), offers a platform for conducting mechanistic studies to develop early insights into the pathophysiological processes by which mitral valve prolapse (MVP) can impact left ventricular (LV) myocardial structure and function, and, thereby, predispose to arrhythmias and sudden death. Such insights are key to identifying interventions to reduce the long-term sequelae of heart failure (HF) and arrhythmias, as well as delineate optimal therapeutic approaches for different patient sub-groups.

Durable left ventricular assist devices (dLVAD) have been increasingly utilized since the mid to late 1990s, with an uptick of utility starting in 2010 following expanded indications for therapy to not only include a bridge to transplantation strategy, but also for those individuals who suffer from advanced heart failure (HF) and do not qualify for cardiac transplantation. Despite the decreasing size of the newest generation devices leading to a lessened occurrence of adverse events, bleeding and infection still remain a concern for clinicians, as well as a general lack of predictability towards adverse events in individuals with a dLVAD in place. There is a lack of description in the literature currently, regarding the interface between what the pump data provides and what is seen in clinical practice. There also is little known about the effects of what is provided in the pump data, in correlation to quality-of-life following dLVAD implantation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to prospectively analyze normal and abnormal pump data through pump operations such as suction events, low flow alarms as well as other adventitious alarms, PI events and power cable disconnects greater than 20 seconds, from the HeartMate 3 ® dLVAD in order to clinically correlate this data to quality of life, frailty and other various medical conditions and adverse events as defined by the Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support (Intermacs). This will be achieved through two aims: 1) Evaluate the effectiveness of dLVAD pump operations data on clinical practice application (quality of life, frailty and various medical conditions, and adverse events such as GIB, RHF, infection, hypertension, arrhythmias and stroke); and 2) Evaluate correlations and relationships of longitudinal normal and abnormal dLVAD pump operations data, to demographic and clinical variables. This study is the first study to evaluate HeartMate 3 ® dLVAD pump operations data over time for effectiveness in the clinical practice.