Admittance measurement for early detection of congestive heart failure

Impedance has been used as a tool for cardiac research since the early 1940’s. Recently there have been many advances in this field in the diagnosis of human heart failure through the measurement of pacemaker and ICD coupled impedance detection to determine the state of pulmonary edema in patients through drops in lung impedance. These new detection methods are far downstream of the initial changes in physiology, which signify heart failure risk, namely, an increased left ventricular (LV) end-diastolic volume (also known as preload). This dissertation presents the first formal validation of the complex admittance technique for more accurate blood volume measurement in vivo in mice. It aims to determine a new configuration of admittance measurement in a large scale animal model (pigs). It also aims to prove that “piggybacking” an admittance measurement system onto previously implanted AICD and bi-ventricular pacemakers is a feasible and practical measurement that will serve as an early warning system for impending heart failure through the measurement of LV preload, which appears before the currently measured drop in lung impedance using previous techniques.