Cardiac resynchronization therapy is a remarkable treatment for people that have a heart condition known as heart failure. We use that term to mean that the heart is not working the way it is supposed to work. And in particular, it usually means that a heart is not pumping out as much blood and as much oxygen to the organs of the body as it should, and as a result, patients have symptoms such as shortness of breath and tiredness and sometimes arrhythmias as well. Cardiac resynchronization therapy is designed to improve outcomes for these patients, make them feel better, decrease their risk of hospitalizations and help them live longer. Cardiac resynchronization therapy involves a small incision in the chest, just a couple inches wide, just beneath the collarbone and the device is implanted underneath the skin. As a result, there’s not the typical longer recoveries that you may see with cardiac surgery in which the chest is open. In Cardiac resynchronization therapy, all patients have are the small incision in the skin in their upper chest by the shoulder. And this results in a recovery time typically of a few days after the procedure. They’ll go home actually the next day and then during the next few days, we ask them to take it easy. Don’t do a whole lot, get a little rest. But there really isn't much that requires recovery other than that after the procedure. We offer patients a fantastic followup program including assessment of their functional capacity and heart function in symptoms at 6 months, 12 months after the procedure and this follow-up program actually includes optimization of the device through programming. You can also, via computer, program the timing of pacing impulses to occur in different ways through the device. It makes a difference how you time the pacing impulses, and this requires expertise and is something that we offer here at UVA.