Medical Technology News From Around The World
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… Kaleida Health System, is among an expanding number of hospital systems adopting “enhanced intensive care” technology – known as eICU – that allows critical care doctors and nurses to monitor dozens of patients at different hospitals simultaneously, much like an air traffic controller keeps track of multiple planes.
From the Kaleida control station Monday, health professionals were monitoring 58 patients at two hospitals via screens that displayed patients’ diagnosis and progress, doctors’ notes and real-time vital statistics like heart rate and blood pressure. The remote caregivers alerted their onsite counterparts to changes or potential problems through videoconferencing at the nurses’ stations.
Kaleida, which expects to bring its three other hospitals online in the spring, stressed the technology is meant to enhance, not replace, onsite care by allowing doctors to more quickly catch and respond to trouble.
More at Visicu, the company that has created eICU technology…
(hat tip: symtym)
How about combining an IV needle with a Doppler ultrasound system, so those blind needle sticks are a little bit more precise? Escalon Vascular Access Inc. has done it:
If you can’t see or feel the vessel, the surest path to vascular access is through your ears. With PD ACCESS you can hear arterial or venous flow and direct the needle to first-stick access, saving time and money.
Doppler-guided PD ACCESS is ideal for all types of patients, from pediatrics to adults. Its portable size allows for quick and easy use in all parts of the hospital, from the CCU to the OR to the Cath Lab. It enables you to distinguish between veins and arteries, so you can avoid puncturing the wrong vessel while attempting to access the correct one.
PD ACCESS utilizes a hand-held monitor and a Doppler transducer located at the tip of the access needle. Sizes range from 18 gauge bare needles to 24 gauge ONC devices, to address a full range of applications.
Placing a piezoelectric crystal for ultrasound guidance into a needle tip and creating a working system is quite a task! Welcome to the 21st century, indeed.
Escalon Vascular Access Inc. even provides sound files of intravenous and intraarterial blood flows for your listening or learning pleasure. Enjoy!
(hat tip: Anesthesiology News)
This product is far, far beyond FDA’s reach. The ultimate in OTC comfort! From the company’s website:
Once again we have adopted a product that has already been used in the Health Care Industry, and provided it to those who hate the waiting. It is called a Female Urinary Pouch. The pouch is Non-Latex, and contains an Odor-Barrier pouch film. At the bottom of the pouch is a Convenience Drain that connects to the leg bag system (worn on the inner calf). It is one size fits all, and is cut to fit one’s needs. Application is explained in the instruction guide.
Don’t forget to check out Stadium Pal.
(hat tip: Wired, which recommends these products for compulsive computer gamers)
Think about it: difficult terrain makes an exploration difficult. So there are no surprizes here:
Radiologists have their own term for inconclusive tests due to obesity: “limited by body habitus” abbreviated as LBBH. (Habitus refers to body build.) Too much fat, they say, makes it difficult or impossible to tell whether a patient has a kidney obstruction, to distinguish a benign fibroid tumor from ovarian cancer or to see whether a fetal heart is developing properly.
“There’s a lot of attention paid to the health effects of being obese, but what the general public doesn’t understand is how much it makes proper diagnosis difficult,” said Levon N. Nazarian, professor of radiology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. “Every stage of an obese person’s medical care is compromised because of their size, and that includes diagnosis and treatment.”
And the manufacturer’s response?
Medical device companies say they are doing just that to cope with the projected tsunami of obese patients in the next decade. By 2010, if present trends continue, 50 percent of Americans could be classified as obese.
Siemens Medical Solutions has recently rolled out a new MRI with a wider opening and has devised an ultrasound system capable of greater depth penetration for what it delicately deems “the technically difficult patient.”
Each imaging technology has its own obesity-related limitations…
It is absolutely true: there are actual physical limitations to each imaging modality. For example, in ultrasound technology, there is a natural trade off between tissue penetration and image resolution. Lowering the frequency of ultrasound to penetrate deeper, will make the image more fuzzy, and less diagnostic. So there is only so much device manufacturers can do…
Newsday reviews ground-breaking drugs and devices of 2004. However it is amazing how such a young blog as this one (< 1 month old), has already reported about many of the technologies covered in the roundup!
Jeffrey Petersen, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine wanted to help Kurowski improve her quality of life and suggested that she undergo the VNUS Closure procedure to treat her varicose veins.
The innovative procedure is a minimally invasive treatment for superficial venous reflux.
Normally, Peterson says, veins carry blood from the extremities toward the heart. With varicose veins, the blood flows backward, pooling impure and acidic blood in the legs.
The Closure procedure uses radiofrequency or laser heat placed directly into the wall of the saphenous vein, which runs from the ankle to the groin. Over time, faulty valves in the saphenous vein can result in unattractive, bulging and painful varicose veins. The radiofrequency or heat causes the vein wall to collapse, cutting off the source of blood.
During the procedure, a mixture of intravenous saline solution, lidocaine (a local anesthetic) and epinephrine (a drug that contracts blood vessels) helps reduce blood loss and postoperative bruising while providing anesthesia.
First, Petersen inserts a thin catheter into the damaged vein through a small incision. Using an ultrasonic guide, the catheter is manipulated up the vein, and radiofrequency energy is delivered to the vein wall, causing it to heat, collapse and seal shut.
Once the diseased vein is closed, healthy veins take over, and normal blood flow returns to the leg, allowing the swelling, pain and discoloration to improve noticeably.
Last year, a study in the Journal of Vascular Surgery compared vein stripping to the VNUS Closure procedure by evaluating procedure-related complications, overall patient recuperation and quality-of-life issues. In every measurable category, patients who underwent the closure procedure had better outcomes.
More info is available at VNUS Medical Technologies…
WNBC reports about a new endovascular aneurysm device developed at The Cleveland Clinic:
It’s a complex problem that until now has been fixed with a risky surgery involving a long recovery.
“You really want to design these devices so they conform to the patient, so they’re flexible,” said Dr. Roy Greenberg, talking about the stents used to open up the vulnerable arteries.
But now researchers at The Cleveland Clinic have developed new technology that, for the first time, uses minimally-invasive surgery to treat multiple aneurysms in the midsection of the body.
Small flexible implants that act as sleeves are put inside the arteries and connected. The blood re-routes through these sleeves, which helps shrink the aneurysms. By connecting these sleeves, doctors can treat aneurysms in several different arteries-something they couldn’t do before.
“I would estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of patients with aneurysms are candidates for this less-invasive therapy,” said Greenberg, of The Cleveland Clinic.
A search of the Cleveland Clinic website returns nothing. Any ideas out there about the device? Any pics of it on the internet yet?
Globes [online] reports:
Remon Medical’s technology is integrated into minute implants, requiring no antenna, wires, or connecting leads, that allow a tiny device implanted deep inside the body to communicate wirelessly with other implanted devices and external systems.
Remon Medical continues its clinical trial of the Remon Impressure, a device that offers on-demand, non-invasive means to monitor intra-aneurysm pressures following endo-vascular graft procedures. The device was implanted and is being used successfully in 21 patients in the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Remon Medical also develops the Remon HeartLook, a device for measurement of pulmonary artery pressure, which is the most important hemodynamic indicator in heart failure. A one-time, minimally invasive catheter-based procedure allows HeartLook unlimited, non-invasive home-based monitoring of a CHF patient’s hemodynamic status.
So how does the company’s technology work? The website of Remon Medical of Caesarea, Israel describes the proprietary technology:
The Company’s core technology utilizes acoustic waves, which both energize and communicate with the implanted device. The advantage of this approach is that acoustic waves transmit effectively inside the body (through soft tissue, bones and fluids), and are not absorbed by the intervening tissue. Acoustic communication requires very little energy to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio when accessing locations deep inside the body.
The implant is energized and activated on-demand via an external transducer. The implant converts the acoustic waves into electrical energy via its proprietary energy exchanger.
As the system’s internal transducer operates at a low resonance frequency, Remon’s implant is omni-directional, insensitive to the exact direction of the external transducer.
More coolness at Remon Medical…
The Medical Revolution Will Be Blogged.
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