Today, PinnacleHealth is home to one of the foremost transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) programs in the world. But in the program’s infancy, PinnacleHealth needed to develop relationships between clinicians and facilitate their collaboration using the right diagnostic imaging technology to ensure success. Using a multidisciplinary, collaborative commitment from clinicians and a state-of-the-art hybrid OR lab anchored by Toshiba’s Infinix-i cardiovascular imaging system, PinnacleHealth is improving outcomes for some of its sickest patients. As one of the finest TAVR programs available today, it is also achieving fewer readmissions and lowering costs.

Surgeons in France have successfully replaced the aortic valve in two patients without opening the chest during surgery. The procedure, using totally endoscopic aortic valve replacement (TEAVR), shows potential for improving quality of life of heart patients by offering significantly reduced chest trauma. It is described in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
PVAD, percutaneous VAD, hemodynamic support, aortix

Percutaneous ventricular assist (pVAD) devices offer more hemodynamic support than the 40-year-old gold standard of intra-aortic balloon pumps (IABPs), but their cost and complexity has limited their use to all but the sickest patients. However, the quest for improving patient outcomes and new applications of pVADs for right ventricular support and heart failure indications continues to expand interest in these devices. Several of these new technologies were highlighted in sessions during the 2013 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) last fall.

 

I have watched a trend in medical technology grow from a small ripple a couple years ago into what I expect will be a tidal wave in 2014 due to growing concern over patient radiation dose levels from medical imaging. Use of radiation dose monitoring software came to the forefront when California, followed by Texas, created laws requiring medical facilities to record the amount of exposure patients receive from things like computed tomography (of which cardiac exams are among the highest dose levels used) and angiography. Adoption of this software will be further accelerated by new Joint Commission standards released in December 2013, which starting in mid-2014 requires the use of radiation dose monitoring software as part of its accreditation.

 

St. Jude Medical Inc. announced the first enrollments in the company’s LEADLESS Pacemaker Observational Study evaluating the Nanostim leadless pacing technology. The Nanostim pacemaker received CE marking in 2013, and post-approval implants have occurred in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

By Dave Fornell, editor

Lumedx Corp. is a provider of vendor-neutral cardiovascular imaging and information systems (CVIS). It announced it has contracted to provide Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital with a comprehensive CVIS that will integrate patient data and images across five different sites. The Lumedx CVIS will consolidate data, improve physician access to patient information, streamline clinical workflows, and support outcomes analysis and registry reporting for the Phoebe Heart and Vascular Center.

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