A 'jacket' for weathered hearts
A remarkable device helps slow—and reverse—heart failure damage

Until now, patients with congestive heart failure had only medications to slow the effects of the disease as their hearts grew larger and weaker. However, physicians at Advocate Christ Medical Center have helped pioneer a device that gives heart failure patients new hope.

The device is a cloth, mesh-like “jacket” that’s stitched permanently around the heart, supporting it and preventing it from expanding further. Christ Medical Center was the only hospital in Illinois to test the jacket—formally called the Acorn CorCap Cardiac Support Device—in clinical trials, using it to treat more than a dozen patients.

Preventing further damage
One of those patients was James Kramer, a 59-year-old former mining supervisor who lost his mother and two brothers to heart disease. Diagnosed with heart failure in 1997 and treating the condition with medication since, Kramer increasingly experienced shortness of breath and numbness in his legs as the disease advanced. His heart failure progressed to the point that he was eligible for a heart transplant, a high-risk procedure that can require a long wait for a donor heart.

Instead, Kramer jumped at the recommendation from his doctor to come from his home in Missouri to Christ Medical Center this past summer to receive the experimental device. “I knew I had a lot to gain,” Kramer says, “and nothing to lose.”

“In heart failure patients, the heart just keeps stretching, becoming round like a basketball when it should be football-shaped,” explains cardiothoracic surgeon Mark Slaughter, M.D., director of Christ Medical Center’s Mechanical Assist Device Program. “Once the heart starts stretching, it no longer has the coordinated contraction it needs to pump blood effectively. The jacket allows the heart to continue pumping blood, but prevents it from dilating further, so it can’t get any bigger.”

Improving patients’ odds
In fact, the jacket’s snug fit can help return the heart to its former size, shape and blood-pumping ability. That means the device holds the promise of reversing heart failure’s progressive damage.

“The jacket allows us to shift the odds in the patient’s favor,” says cardiologist Marc Silver, M.D., director of the Heart Failure Institute at Christ Medical Center. “It may change the way we think about heart failure and give patients new options.”

Now working hard on the treadmill and with weights—and back to playing his favorite game of pool and enjoying time with his family—Kramer says he feels great.

“I’ve always had a good outlook on life,” he says. “Now, I’m even happier knowing that I have a good chance of being around for a long time.”