Westerly — Around the Charlestown, R.I., apartment complex where he lives among elderly residents, he’s known as “The Mayor.” But up until recently, James A. Mason, a longtime heart patient, had been dragging.

In December, he had to be taken to South County Hospital in Wakefield, R.I., every few days, his legs full of fluid. He was having trouble breathing.

“It felt like I had a big rubber band around my chest,” said Mason, 66, a retired volunteer firefighter who put in 25 years as a welder at Electric Boat in Groton. He spoke about his condition in a recent interview at the Morgan Medical Building in Westerly, where he’s treated by Dr. Howard L. Haronian, East Region vice president and chief medical director of Hartford HealthCare’s Heart and Vascular Institute.

Haronian, an interventional cardiologist, determined that Mason was a candidate for CardioMEMS, a system that enables physicians to remotely monitor certain heart patients.

Candidates are those who have been hospitalized for congestive heart failure in the previous year and who fit the profile of New York Heart Association Class III heart failure patients, meaning those who're comfortable at rest but for whom limited physical activity causes fatigue, palpitations or dyspnea (labored breathing).

In an outpatient procedure performed Jan. 30 at The William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, Haronian inserted a tiny battery-free sensor into Mason's pulmonary artery, enabling physicians to measure and keep track of Mason’s heart rate and the pressure in his lungs caused by fluid buildup. For about five minutes each day, Mason lies on an “antenna” pillow that wirelessly transmits the data to the doctor’s office. There, Haronian and his assistants direct Mason to make any necessary adjustments in his medications, which include Lasix, the diuretic that treats fluid retention.

“It’s kept me out of the hospital at least eight times that I know of,” Mason said of the remote monitoring of his condition. “If my lung pressure’s up, they increase my Lasix and that brings it right down. I get a call if it needs adjusting.”

He said he still sees Haronian “every couple of months.”

Haronian said the CardioMEMS device is a “very sensitive indicator” of the fluid backup that leads to decompensated heart failure — a sudden worsening of the signs of a heart attack.

“When the heart cannot meet the demands of the body, fluid backs up in the legs, belly and other places,” he said. “That leads to hospitalization. … At some point, it can’t be managed by pills. Up until now, there had been no way to detect it.”

CardioMEMS implants can reduce a patient’s hospital visits by as much as 50 percent, creating substantial cost savings for the health care system, Haronian said.

Mason’s implant was a first for Hartford HealthCare and for eastern Connecticut hospitals, according to Steve Coates, a Hartford HealthCare spokesman. The CardioMEMS system has since been introduced to patients at Hartford Hospital and the Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain.

Haronian is involved in a study of other potential applications for CardioMEMS, which he described as a “a virtual ICU (intensive care unit).”

Breathing better, Mason has been walking his dog every day. His neighbors want “The Mayor” to put on a dinner.

“The toughest part is finding stuff with no salt,” he said, referencing the bane of the heart patient’s diet.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com