Implantation of a bi-ventricular pacemaker can offer a better quality of life for patients with congestive heart failure (CHF).

In a healthy person, the four chambers of the heart contract in synchrony to move blood throughout the body as the heart beats. In an estimated 650,000 of the five million CHF patients in the United States, the two lower chambers of the heart no longer contract at the same time.

When this happens, there is leakage of the mitral valve, with blood leaking back into the lungs, causing shortness of breath with exercise.

Cardiac resynchronization therapy -- also known as bi-ventricular pacing -- restores normal contraction of the ventricles by pacing both ventricles instead of just one as in normal pacemakers.

The bi-ventricular pacemaker is implanted just under the skin, and last approximately seven to eight years before it needs to be replaced.

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