A sensor smaller than a dime is helping doctors keep heart failure patients out of the hospital.

Abbott's CardioMEMS device is a new pulmonary pressure monitoring system that can recognize changes before a patient even experiences symptoms. The new technology is being used at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute to monitor patients like Alan Petrasek from home, so they don't have to make as many trips to the hospital.

"I think for him, it's sort of like a guardian angel that's in his lung," said Dr. Andrew Kao, Medical Director of Heart Failure and Transplant at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute.  

Watch KSHB's full story on the new technology below.

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