St. Jude Medical's Merlin@home transmitter

There is a growing trend in electrophysiology toward remote, home monitoring of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices, pacemakers and implantable cardiac monitors (ICMs).

A trend that was fueled by cardiologists wanting to gain a larger share of reimbursement fees, while at the same time providing more personalized care to their patients, is beginning to fizzle as reimbursements continue to be cut.

Bare metal stents (BMS) were introduced in 1994 as an improvement over balloon angioplasty alone, which had a high restenosis rate of between 30-40 percent. The cobalt-chromium or stainless steel stents helped reduce restenosis, bringing rates down to about 15-20 percent, but BMS also increased the risk of early in-stent thrombosis shortly following the procedure.

September 18, 2009 ¬– Abbott has announced the company's schedule of key news announcements and events during the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) 2009 conference in San Francisco, Sept. 21-25.

September 17, 2009 – NMT Medical Inc. said yesterday it will commence data analysis for its landmark STARFlex patent foramen ovale (PFO)/stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) clinical trial, CLOSURE I, in April 2010 instead of its originally scheduled fall 2010, so it can accelerate its pre-market approval (PMA) submission to the FDA.

September 17, 2009 – Boston Scientific Corp. announced its schedule of the company's major events and press announcements at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation's (CRF) 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium, Sept. 21-25, in San Francisco.

September 17, 2009 – The 13th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) on Wednesday featured four late breaking clinical trials.

September 17, 2009 – Elixir Medical Corp. said today its stent systems using bioabsorbable polymers will be featured in multiple sessions at the 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics scientific symposium (TCT 2009), Sept. 21-25, in San Francisco.

September 17, 2009 – One of the activities at TCT 2009 is the Hearts in Hand Collection, a library of physical heart models in a variety of structural disease states, which allow physicians to gain quick and thorough understanding of spatial relationships and practice catheter pathways and device sizing prior to conducting minimally invasive interventions.


According to the American Heart Association (AHA), arrhythmias afflict more than 4 million patients and results in approximately half a million deaths each year in the United States. Electrocardiography (ECG) measurements, which record and interpret cardiac electrical activity over time, are widely used to detect abnormal heart rhythms.
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