David Kessel’s high blood pressure started when he was just 13 years old. His doctors gave him many tests, but they never determined the cause. By his early 20s, he was taking 17 different pills a day, yet he still had a hard time climbing a flight of stairs without getting winded. He wore a blood pressure monitor, and its reading routinely hovered dangerously high.
In summer 2005, Kessel signed up for a clinical trial in St. Louis, near his home. Surgeons working with a Minneapolis-based company called CVRx implanted an electrode the size of a half-dollar on his carotid artery. After the surgery, a battery-powered generator implanted in his chest electrically stimulated pressure sensors in the artery. Those sensors sent impulses to the brain, which, in turn, fired signals to reduce his heart rate and relax his blood vessels.
“I could actually feel my blood pressure going down,” says Kessel. Nine years later, he not only can get through his days without feeling exhausted, but he can also go on long bike rides with his two daughters.
Pharmaceuticals are often a doctor’s first line of defense when treating everything from infection to diabetes. But if the fledgling field of bioelectronic medicine takes off, devices like Kessel’s could give doctors a whole new tool in their arsenal.
