Click to enlarge I received this letter today about an elderly patient. She has heart failure and heart valve disease. The letter is full of technical jargon. For the non-doctors, her heart muscle is weak and not pumping well. The diseased heart valves mean that many of the drugs that one would normally use, such as […]

Advanced Neuromodulation Systems, a division of St. Jude Medical, is reporting initiation of the US trial of its Genesis® Neurostimulation System. The trial will study the effectiveness of the system to alleviate symptoms of treatment-resistant angina. The company’s spinal cord stimulator was just implanted into a 53-year-old Massachusetts woman at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical […]

How will the baby-boomers shape the future of medical technology? Well, shirts embedded with live electrocardiograms and pulse oximeters that wirelessly communicate data to your “digital nurse” or [real] doctor may be an example. Six Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany have spent two years working on a system that can record the main cardiovascular functions 24 hours […]

The New York Times is reporting that Medtronic’s new heart monitor, the Chronicle, is likely to be rejected by the FDA. Why? Because it’s not keeping patients out of the hospital — it’s main selling point: The device’s manufacturer, Medtronic, has been developing wireless data-gathering technology for implanted therapeutic devices like defibrillators and insulin pumps. It […]

Richard Lazar, the inventor of the ResQPod Circulatory Enhancer for CPR, is continuing his efforts to improve the survival of cardiac arrest patients. Through his company, Atrus Inc., he is beginning to market new software that will help first responders to locate nearby AED’s (Automated External Defibrillator). When bystanders perform immediate CPR, it buys […]

Training the ear to detect the intricacies of cardiac pathology on auscultation is one of the harder skills for medical students to master. This is due in part to the time it takes to listen to get enough repetition with healthy and non healthy hearts, but not for long thanks to researchers at […]

Most people don’t like the idea of having a chunk of metal sitting in their body for the rest of one’s life, so the “ideal” for any medical device is to make it bioabsorbable. Its only a matter of time before the degradable-craze hits the stent market, and Abbott is making the first move. Two […]

Leadtek, a company better known for its graphics cards and motherboards, is venturing into the world of medical devices in an effort to “improve the human condition.” Leadtek HealthBaby & Easy Band: Count on Me, and You Win Your Health With Leadtek Easy Band recorded data can be transmitted via a USB dongle to a PC […]

If there’s any doubt that the Baby Boomers are driving medical innovation, then this Israeli-born “personal cellular-digital” ECG should put that question to rest once and for all. The CardioSen’C is a personal cellular-digital 12 lead ECG transmitter which transmits to SHL’s medical call centre a patient’s 12 lead ECG for the purpose of remote real […]

Monstrous in size (2 metric tons) and in computer power, Toshiba’s Aquilion beta 256, the world’s first 256-slice CT scanner, has now been installed at Johns Hopkins. It is the first such a device in North America and only the second outside of Japan. The key technological advance of the 256-CT, which looks like a patient […]

The makers of the CardioSen’C are light years ahead of their competition in the development of advanced cardiac monitoring devices. The CardioPocket™ is an elegant leather wallet suitable for carrying bills, credit cards, identification cards and the like. In addition, it serves as a 1-lead (rhythm strip) ECG transmitter for diagnosing heart rhythm disturbances. The […]

The Plain Dealer is the major newspaper in Cleveland and we are lucky to have Pulitzer-winning journalists writing for it. I especially enjoy the Friday section which lists many “things to do” for the weekend: festivals, museums, etc. On Thursday, The Plain Dealer featured AskDrWiki, a medical wiki created by 4 cardiology fellows at the Cleveland […]