BALTIMORE -- A new treatment for congestive heart failure has helped patients at Baltimore's Good Samaritan Hospital get healthy.

Television station WBAL explained the process is a bit like kidney dialysis for the heart. Doctors hope it will cut down on hospital stays for patients nationwide.

Congestive heart failure accounts for some 1 million visits to the hospital.

Gregory Hobbs hopes the machines used in the treatment will help him avoid regular trips to the emergency room. For more than a decade, the 52-year-old has suffered from congestive heart failure.

"I can't go up steps very fast and I can't run at all," Hobbs said.

Good Samaritan's doctors, such as Dr. Matt Goldstein, are using something called ultra filtration to drain liters of excess fluid that Hobbs' heart is unable to pump to his kidneys for normal removal.

"Blood is pulled out of one of the access ports (and) put through a filter. Water is then taken out of the patient and the rest of the solutes (are) then put back into patient through the other port," Goldstein said. "We've had patients come in who are 50 pounds overloaded and we'd take off 4 liters a day for weeks."

Franciotti said the normal treatment is medication, but after prolonged use patients build up a resistance and the side effects can affect other organs.

"This is a way to bypass all those, put a patient at less risk and make them feel better, faster in a more efficient way," Goldstein said.

The process takes about eight hours, and doctors said a typical patient may need three treatments in order to take off enough fluid to allow standard medications to work more effectively.

In Hobbs' case, he needed more treatments, but he said he's feeling much better.

"Like over the weekend, I was usually gaining 3 to 4 pounds back. This past weekend, it stayed off, the medicine was working," he said. "If I don't have this, then I go to the hospital for a week at a time. So, it's better to come here for a day."

Good Samaritan was one of the more than two dozen hospitals nationwide to participate in clinical trials for the new ultra filtration technology.