Healthcare IT vendors offer a variety of cardiovascular information systems (CVIS), picture archiving and communications systems (PACS), imaging and diagnostic hardware they say will integrate into a seamless electronic medical record. However, end-users still complain this level of interoperability does not exist.

Warren Hospital, an acute care community hospital serving Warren and Hunterdon counties in rural New Jersey, supports 214 patient beds and 140,000 outpatient visits per year.
radial access side board for radial artery access procedures in the cath lab
radial artery access, transradial drape for procedures in the cath lab
radial artery access, transradial wrist patient prep

The femoral artery approach for cardiac catheterizations has been used as the gold-standard in the United States, but there is growing interest in the transradial approach. One of the main advantages of radial access is increased safety with fewer bleeding complications.

As healthcare marches toward completely wireless electronic medical records, Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology will periodically highlight how cardiac departments around the country are working toward this goal.

Based on my observations and the devices that caught the eye of the doctors on the Diagnostic & Interventional Cardiology Editorial Advisory Board, we created the following predictions of what will be hot trends to watch in 2011.

February 17, 2011 – Abnormal heart rate turbulence is associated with an increased risk of heart disease death in otherwise low-risk older individuals, according to a study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The study appears in the Feb. 15 edition of the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology.

February 17, 2011 – On Jan. 15, after 864 days of life with an artificial heart, Charles Okeke received a dual heart and kidney transplant at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix. Okeke had been implanted with the Total Artificial Heart, from SynCardia.

February 16, 2011 – To expand its portfolio of devices for lower extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD), Boston Scientific this week acquired two new technologies to treat chronic total occlusions (CTOs).

February 16, 2011 – Ziehm Imaging has received Frost & Sullivan's European Product Leadership Award 2011 in the interventional radiology category.

February 16, 2011 – Enrollment has been completed for a trial investigating a force-sensitive catheter during cardiac ablation. The EFFICAS study in intended to demonstrate that the TactiCath catheter, by Endosense, results in superior outcomes in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF).

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