Oklahoma’s First CardioMEMS Implant for Adult Congenital Heart Disease Completed at OU Health

OU Health, the University of Oklahoma’s academic health system, has become the first hospital in Oklahoma to implant a CardioMEMS™ HF System in an adult with congenital heart disease, marking a significant milestone in advanced heart failure care for one of the state's most medically complex patient populations. The minimally invasive procedure allows physicians to remotely monitor heart pressures, detect early signs of worsening heart failure, and intervene before hospitalization becomes necessary.

The procedure was performed by OU Health interventional cardiologist Dr. Mohit Pahuja, M.D., assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. The patient, a young woman from Coweta, Oklahoma, was born with tetralogy of Fallot, a complex congenital heart defect repaired during childhood. Despite successful surgery, she later developed progressive heart failure requiring frequent travel to Oklahoma City for specialized care.

With the help of a coin-sized CardioMEMS wireless sensor implanted in her pulmonary artery during a minimally invasive catheter procedure, her heart pressure can be monitored remotely from home, allowing her care team to detect early changes and adjust medications before symptoms worsen – reducing travel, avoiding unnecessary hospital visits, and improving quality of life.

For a patient living nearly two hours from Oklahoma City, the impact is immediate: fewer hospital visits, fewer invasive procedures and more care delivered from home.

“This is much more than a new device. It changes how we care for patients,” Dr. Pahuja said. “Adult congenital heart patients like her often have complex anatomy and require lifelong specialized follow-up. With CardioMEMS, we can detect worsening heart failure weeks before patients become critically ill, allowing us to intervene early while they remain safely at home. Very few centers nationally have applied CardioMEMS to this population, and OU Health is now among them. For Oklahoma patients, there was nowhere else in the state offering this option.”

How CardioMEMS Works

The CardioMEMS system, manufactured by Abbott, is a wireless sensor implanted in the pulmonary artery during a catheter-based procedure that does not require open-heart surgery. Once in place, patients take daily readings at home using an external reader device that wirelessly collects pressure data and transmits that data securely to the clinical care team. Clinicians review the readings on a regular basis and contact patients when an adjustment in treatment is needed, catching problems before they become crises.

While CardioMEMS is already being used in Oklahoma for patients with standard congestive heart failure, OU Health is the first in the state to use this technology in an adult congenital heart disease patient, a population whose surgically altered anatomy makes the procedure significantly more challenging and requires highly specialized expertise.

A Step Forward for Oklahoma’s Only Comprehensive ACHD Program

OU Health operates Oklahoma's most comprehensive Adult Congenital Heart Disease program, caring for a growing population of patients living with congenital heart problems. Many of those patients live far from Oklahoma City and face significant travel and logistical burdens to receive specialized care.

CardioMEMS technology helps bridge that gap, reducing the need for repeated invasive procedures, such as invasive right heart catheterizations, which involve passing a tube through the neck or groin to measure heart pressures. The technology allows that same monitoring to happen from a patient’s own home, with clinical intervention triggered only when data shows it is needed.

Dr. Pahuja described the procedure as an important step in building OU Health's advanced heart failure capabilities, including goals for adult heart transplant and heart pump programs. He also called it a demonstration of OU Health’s commitment to extending innovation beyond the walls of the hospital and into the daily lives of Oklahoma patients.

The procedure reflects OU Health’s tripartite mission of patient care, research and education. As an academic health system, OU Health trains the next generation of cardiologists and heart failure specialists, conducts research that advances understanding of complex congenital heart disease, and delivers that expertise directly to patients across Oklahoma.