What is EECP ?

EECP or Enhanced External Counter Pulsation is a circulatory assist device designed in USA and approved by USFDA for treatment of disease affecting blood vessels of the heart.It increases blood flow to the diseased arteries by 200% and opens up collaterals. Thus it relieves chest pain and difficulty in breathing. The patient can walk longer, breathe easier and have a much better quality of life. The five year survival rate is the same for surgery, stents and EECP. EECP therapy extends the ability of interventional cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons to treat coronary artery disease, and provides non-interventional cardiologists with a means managing of participating in the treatment of patients who have become refractory to drugs and are suffering from heart failure, angina, symptoms have reccured after surgery or inoperable heart disease.

EECP therapy is an outpatient treatment for angina and heart failure. The therapy is typically given in 35 one-hour-sessions, five days a week, for seven weeks. Patients lie down on a padded table and have their calves and lower and upper thighs wrapped in blood pressure-like cuffs. The system, which is synchronized to the individual patient's cardiac cycle, inflates the cuffs with air to create external pressure when the heart is resting (diastole) and deflates the cuffs just before the heart beats (systole). The system's action, which pulses counter to the heart's beating, increases blood flow to the heart muscle, decreases the heart's workload and creates a greater oxygen supply for the heart muscle while lowering the heart's need for oxygen.