CARDIOLOGISTS are hoping a near £100,000 grant will help a third of people who find pacemakers don’t work.

Consultant cardiologist Dr Tim Betts and research fellow Dr James Gamble, who work at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, have received the funding from Heart Research UK to continue their work refining a new technique for re-synchronising the heart with a pacemaker.

About 120 patients a year in Oxfordshire receive a pacemaker, which helps control irregular heart rates and is implanted under the skin through a local anaesthetic surgery.

However, about 40 patients will not improve because, at the moment, the wires that are attached to the pacemaker cannot access the internal muscles in the heart. The Oxford team has now refined a technique where the wires are threaded into the ventricles and inner chambers of the heart.

Using sophisticated imaging such as 3D mapping systems, the technique pinpoints the affected area in the heart.

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Applying the technique could significantly improve the results for a third of patients, they believe.

Dr Gamble said: “It’s great news for us because it means that we can carry on our work and support more patients.”

Dr Betts added: “We have performed the operation on 18 people in the last three years.

“Now it’s very much a case of refining the technique to see how it works in more patients.”

The team at the John Radcliffe in Headington has been working on ways to help people who suffer from heart failure.

Heart failure happens when the muscles in the heart are unable to pump blood around the body sufficiently.

This results in some patients having difficulty exercising or even walking to the shops.

Dr Betts has already taught doctors at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and hospitals in Sheffield and Brighton how to use the technique, and hopes that it could become more widely used in the future.

About 20 patients in Oxfordshire will receive the new treatment, which could dramatically improve their standard of living and help them live more active lives with the disease.

Dr Betts added: “With the new technique we can help people achieve more, walk further and live full and active lives.”

Eventually the technique could help some of the 750,000 people in the UK who suffer from heart failure.

Heart Research UK director Barbara Harpham, said: “This project could help heart patients get more successful treatment for their condition. At Heart Research UK we fund research that benefits patients as soon as possible.”

“This latest grant brings the amount we have funded on research projects in Oxford to over £650,000 over the past 10 years.

“What people raise locally has been spent on projects near you.”