Cardiologists are increasingly concerned about patients with persistent hypertension demanding a new technique, in the absence of clinical proof of its long-term benefit. As more related devices are launched, John Brosky reports on the procedure, drawbacks, and a potential €2 billion market.
One heart – One Team, the motto for this year’s German Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Congress emphasises that cardiac surgeons and cardiologists must now work more in tandem for their mutual patients. This is not just a short-lived three-day slogan, but a daily reality at the University Heart Centre Hamburg, as EH correspondent Holger Zorn reports
Are surgeons still opting for surgical procedures solely for medical need – or are economics forcing their decisions? That vexatious question, posed at the 129th Congress of the German, was spurned at the outset by Markus W Büchler MD, President of the Society and Medical Director of the Department of General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery at University Hospital Heidelberg. ‘We surgeons…
The European operating room solutions market, comprising surgical lights, surgical tables and pendants, is primarily a replacement market. Although tightening budgets are hindering market prospects, the need for state-of-the-art operating rooms are creating lucrative growth opportunities.
Meeting with EH editor Brigitte Dinkloh, Congress Secretary Professor Alexis Ulrich MD (left), Assistant Medical Director at the Clinic for General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery at the University of Heidelberg, outlined the scientific programme, discussed some impressive advances in surgical procedures, and explained why the gathering bears the slogan Surgery in Partnership.
The world’s first gene cancer therapy study of an innovative oral vaccine is underway at the Surgical Clinic of Heidelberg University Hospital.
Cohort A and B Results. Aortic stenosis is characterised by the hardening and narrowing of the aortic valve that pumps blood into the body’s main artery. It affects nearly 5% of those over 75 in Europe, with an estimated 16,000 Britons suffering from severe aortic stenosis.
Swiss surgical patients can check on and correct their treatment data and thereby facilitate reliable hospital benchmarking. In 1995, surgeons in the Biel, Burgdorf and Zurich Limmattal hospitals founded the Working Group for Quality Assurance in Surgery (AQC) to collect and compare reatment data.
Philips and MAQUET mark milestone with 50th shipment of Philips’ hybrid operating room (OR) with MAQUET’s surgical table to Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
Johns Hopkins surgeons have established a facial transplantation team and are in the process of obtaining approval from the University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) of their protocol to perform the complicated procedure.
The list of post-operative complications is long. Most common are fever, chest infection, pneumonia, wound infection, bleeding or deep vein thrombosis. As these post-surgical complications can range from minor, self-limiting problems to major life-threatening events, their definition and severity staging can be challenging.
People who donate a portion of their livers for transplant to a relative or friend whose liver is failing can generally expect to live long, healthy lives and recover safely from the donation surgery, Johns Hopkins researchers have found.
Surgical simulations can save lives, Anja Behringer reports Medical errors occur more frequently than traffic accidents and clearly better systems are needed to improve patient safety. Thus the importance of medical training using human simulation models is increasingly emphasised in Germany.
Berchtold has been among the world’s leading manufacturers of quality surgical equipment for almost 90 years, today offering operating theatre lights, tables, ceiling supply units, video and camera systems, information and communications systems and customised surgical solutions. Recently the firm launched a radically new surgical lighting system. We sked Jochen Weisser, the firm’s technical…
This week, university hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich, Germany, is the first hospital in the world to operating Brainlab’s Curve Image Guided Surgery system. Curve is Brainlab’s latest generation of image-guided surgery systems. The new technology provides surgeons with better guidance and control during surgery enabling faster, more precise and safer interventions.
Step by step, the Helsinki Declaration is being implemented: Great Britain and the Netherlands have made it law. In Germany, it is voluntary. Report: Susanne Werner
Excising the entire cancer tumour from the stomach prevents relapses. This procedure can now be performed endoscopically. Holger Zorn reports from the Visceral Medicine 2011 Congress in Leipzig.
They are rarely noticed but nevertheless they carry a lot of weight in a hospital: intelligent mounting solutions for medical equipment and monitors. While the eyes of physicians, nurses and patients alike tend to be fixed on the device, hardly anybody ever looks at the way, the device is fixed to the wall or the ceiling. The engineers of CIM med, based in Munich, Germany, however did have a…
Operating theatres are highly complex and costly hospital areas. The smoother everything runs, the better. Instant access – in emergency or planned cases – to the patient’s radiological examinations is vital, as is the seamless integration of images acquired during surgery.
Ziehm Imaging’s C-arm is a general X-ray unit. It’s what hospitals really need, says Timo Ihamäki, the firm’s business manager, because ‘It’s a mobile unit that can be moved to the OR, out of the OR, to the trauma room, A & E, or wherever needed -- it’s always in the hallway. Whoever needs it, takes it.’
Unique software embeds an extensively annotated normal template into a patient’s axial images, Vinodh A Kumar MD reports from the Division of Diagnostic Imaging and Physics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Houston, Texas
Xenon anaesthesia not only preserves the heart and circulation but also prevents post-operative delirium. The high cost of the gas is made up for by a shorter length of sta. Report: Holger Zorn
More than 30 clinicians, researchers and industry partners (including Siemens, Aesculap and SurgiTAIX, an RWTH spin-off) are working on OrthoMIT, Germany’s largest collaborative orthopaedic research project that aims to develop future strategies for knees, hip and spinal surgery. Anja Behringer reports
Having secured significant contracts with hospitals in Sweden and the Netherlands, the UK-based mobile surgical services firm Vanguard Healthcare aims for further expansion in Europe. Mark Nicholls reports