‘I’m anxious to see what I’m doing a year from now’: Revolutionary heart disease treatment comes to WNY

“I just feel like I’m all dead,” he told his family doctor.

Now, Wilkins, 79, of East Concord, is as active as before his symptoms started. He’s building decks, mowing his lawn and will soon resume riding his motorcycle, thanks to a groundbreaking medical treatment.

Wilkins was one of the first patients in Western New York to receive Cardiac Contractility Modulation Therapy, which involves implanting a device similar to a pacemaker that delivers timed electrical pulses to the heart, improving its ability to pump oxygen-rich blood.

In March, an electrophysiologist at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo started to perform CCM Therapy procedures with the Impulse Dynamics Optimizer Smart Mini – a device approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2019. He has done five procedures so far, including on Wilkins in late June.

Electrophysiologists at the Gates Vascular Institute on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus have performed six CCM Therapy procedures since June, when they started using the same Impulse Dynamics device.

The procedure reduces hospital readmissions and improves symptoms, said Dr. Vijay Iyer, medical director of cardiology and the Structural Heart Program at Kaleida Health, which runs Gates Vascular.

None of the institute’s CCM patients have been readmitted, Iyer said.

“I think it’s one of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine since I started about 20 years ago,” said Dr. Zachary Lill, the electrophysiologist who performed all of the CCM procedures at Mercy Hospital.

Wilkins’ symptoms started in November 2019. He experienced intense shortness of breath and felt very bloated in his legs, so Wilkins and his wife, Pat, went to Mercy Hospital.

Medical staff saw him bent over as he waited in the lobby and immediately took him to the emergency room.

With…