TAKING IT TO HEART.

• Author: Pressler, Alyssa
• Position: MEDICAL: HEART & CANCER CARE

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in North Carolina. Researchers and medical professionals are dedicated to changing that.

The numbers are staggering. One person dies of cardiovascular disease every 34 seconds in the United States, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And about 800,000 people--about 605,000 for the first time--suffer a heart attack each year. Almost 20% of them don't even realize it happened, though damage is done.

Heart disease killed about 700,000 U.S. residents in 2020, making it the leading cause of death for men, women and people of most racial and ethnic groups, according to CDC. The numbers are slightly better for North Carolina, where its heart-disease death rate fell to No. 31 in 2019 nationally from No. 24 in 2015, according to Justus-Warren Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Task Force research, which was completed last year using the most-recent data.

Still, heart disease and stroke are the No. 1 and No. 5, respectively, causes of death in North Carolina, according to CDC. The Justus-Warren study also found heart disease and strokes were the highest diagnostic categories when it came to hospitalization charges and Medicaid expenditures. These costs, along with the number of heart-disease and stroke deaths, hit the state's minority populations the hardest.

The state's health care systems and research centers are striking back. They're creating solutions and developing technologies to combat heart disease. Their goals are lowering death rates, relieving symptoms and acting fast in matters that are often life or death.

Heart failure--when the heart can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs--affects about 6.2 million adults nationwide. Treatments depend on its severity, but they include reducing sodium intake through diet, increasing exercise, and implanting a defibrillator or pacemaker. While these efforts can strengthen a patient's heart, their success in reducing symptoms may be limited.

The search for better heart failure treatments led Cone Health researchers to participate in BeAT-HF, a national clinical trial of BAROTISM NEO, a device manufactured by CVRx, the study's sponsor. The device sends electrical pulses to the patient's neck, where cells sense how blood is moving through the carotid arteries. Those cells deliver information to the brain, which controls production of stress hormones that impact heart function. The device reduces heart-failure symptoms, which...