The health of the laboratory/ clinician relationship has always served as a good indicator of the overall quality of a given healthcare network. Historically, labs focused ‘heads down’ on delivering excellent test results, but today appear to be expanding their horizons to partner with clinicians for better patient care.
The acquisition of large diagnostic imaging equipment is clearly expensive – but further costs also result from their energy consumption and maintenance, as well as hidden costs due to complicated, labour-intensive handling, removal and disposal of old equipment, etc. often not considered during purchasing. Report: Anja Behringer
Royal Philips Electronics provided clinicians from across the globe with a glimpse of future innovations designed to advance cardiac care, including the current management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and associated cardiac conditions, during the 2011 Congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
‘Sacrilegious meddling with divine providence’ was the charge brought against New York cardiologist Alfred Hyman in the 1930s when, after successful animal experiments, he applied the first cardiac pacemaker – then still a cumbersome external device – in human patients. A quarter of a century later the first cardiac pacemaker, mounted in a shoe polish tin and covered by epoxy resin, was…
Explaining the value of the iU22 xMATRIX ultrasound system, Philips describes its new array transducer within the system – the X6-1 PureWave xMATRIX – as revolutionary.‘It harnesses the power of over 9000 active elements, more than 35 times greater than conventional transducers, to capture crisp, high-resolution images of even technically challenging patients,’ the company points out,…
An artificial heart will be implanted in a patient before the end of 2011, marking a milestone in medicine. The developers are now accelerating plans to manufacture thousands of these mechanical hearts for patients worldwide, reports John Brosky
Although transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is increasingly the most used surgical procedure in Germany, only two products have been approved for routine use. Although this has prompted other medical device manufacturers to go into action, according to Professor Justus Strauch, head of cardiac surgery at the Klinikum Bergmannsheil, Bochum, no one has yet taken the lead in this…
Recent events have again underlined the reason why Papworth Hospital in ambridgeshire, England, maintains a enowned international reputation for cardiac and thoracic procedures. As Britains largest specialist cardiothoracic hospitals, over 2,000 major heart operations were performed there in 2010. In the year ending 1 April 2011, 824 patients had coronary bypass operations, including urgent,…
In recent years the ultrasound division of Siemens Healthcare appeared to be a Sleeping Beauty slumbering on in the shadow of large slice imaging equipment such as PET/CT and MR/PET, the medical technology giant’s favourite daughters. With many of the world’s wealthy princes, particularly from India, Brazil, China, and so on, knocking on Siemens’ doors, the giant has at last decided to wake…
Catastrophes draw people closer, as demonstrated by the development of the new high-end ultrasound scanner Aplio 500 from Toshiba. The clinical evaluation period took place during the tsunami and the nuclear catastrophe in Fukusima. Professor Thomas Fischer at the Radiological Institute, Charité Clinic in Berlin, was impressed by the enormous commitment shown by the Japanese firm’s engineers…
Sahlgrenska University Hospital provides emergency and basic care for the 700,000 inhabitants of the Gothenburg region. It also provides highly specialised care for the 1.7 million inhabitants in Sweden’s west because, in this country, endoscopic ultrasound examinations are only provided in university hospitals. Thus Sahlgrenska’s physicians receive referrals of difficult diagnostic cases…
A new robot using high-precision tactile sensors and flexible motor control technology has taken Japan one step closer to its goal of providing high-quality care for its growing elderly population.
Until 15 January 2012, young researchers working in Europe who are not older than 35 years are invited to apply for the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators. This highly prestigious prize was first established in 1995. It acknowledges outstanding contributions to biomedical research in Europe based on methods of molecular biology, including novel analytical concepts.
Sectra and Royal Philips Electronics have signed an agreement under which Philips will acquire Sectra’s mammography modality operations. The cash purchase consideration amounts to EUR 57.5 million on cash and debt-free basis. The agreement also includes an additional possible earn-out EUR 12.5 million in accordance with specially agreed terms and conditions.
A major public hospital has become the first in Paris to be equipped with a Gamma Knife, the device that enables the surgeon to operate on the brain with no blade or blood involved.
On average, European countries possess 17 MRI machines per one million people. With only 9.4 MRI machines per million people, France ranks between Portugal and Turkey, putting it among the least well-equipped in Europe, according to the Société Française de Radiologie.
HI-RTE allows the assessment and real-time colour display of tissue elasticity. The current generation ultrasound modality has proven applications in breast, prostate, thyroid and pancreatic disease and where diagnostic biopsy is indicated, HI-RTE allows more accurate localization and targeting of lesions.
Although the 17 lectures delivered at this year‘s Medical Technology Congress in Berlin, Germany, focused on topics ranging from experimental and clinical research to routine daily diagnostic methods, the pervading interest was in the improvement, development and distribution of non-invasive imaging devices and corresponding software.
How low? During the GE Healthcare Lunch Symposium of GE Healthcare at this year’s ECR in Vienna, Michael Maher, Professor of Radiology at the University College, Cork, provided an answer: 1.2 millisievert – at least for abdominal CT scans in patients with Crohn’s disease.
United Kingdom – A call has been made for tighter regulatory controls to ensure the safety regulation of medical devices, following joint investigations carried out by the British Medical Journal and the Channel 4 TV programme Dispatches, which were televised and published online at BMJ.com this May.
PredictAD is an EU-funded research project that develops objective and efficient methods for enabling earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Diagnosis requires a holistic view of the patient combining information from several sources, such as, clinical tests, imaging and blood samples.
Dr Bill Svensson believes that elastography has the potential to improve diagnosis of breast cancer, reduce the number of false positives in the detection of the condition and also lead to fewer biopsies performed as accuracy of imaging improves further. This June he highlighted the potential of elastography and the developments in the imaging modality at two sessions at the United Kingdom…
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women. Evaluation of the axillary lymph nodes is essential to insure complete cancer removal. Fluorescence imaging instead of radioisotopes is an innovative method for sentinel lymph node detection.
Every medical congress is an opportunity for the manufacturers to showcase their products. This year’s congress of the German Röntgen Society was no exception -- and one innovation particularly caught the attention of our European Hospital team: positron emission mammography, PEM for short.
Initially meant to bridge the gap before a heart transplant is performed, today ventricular assist devices (VADs) are increasingly considered ‘a lasting therapy option’, according to Professor Heinrich Schima, Head of the Centre for Medical Physics and Biomedical Technology at the Medical University of Vienna.