|
Written by Justine Cadet
Slightly more than one-third of patients without known disease, who underwent elective cardiac catheterization, had obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) out of nearly 400,000 patients at 663 sites, based on study findings published March 11 in the New England Journal of Medicine. However, in an interview, Timothy D. Henry, MD, from Minneapolis Heart Institute, said that when reviewing the study’s data in its entirety, it appears that most practices are performing these procedures properly.
The total collective radiation dose to the U.S. population has doubled since 1980 and U.S. per-capita annual effective dose from medical procedures was six times greater in 2006 than it was in 1980, according to an article published in the November issue of Radiology.
Carestream Health has released a new Web-based cardiology PACS product in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy.
Access Scientific has received FDA clearance for its MicroAccess Wand, a safety introducer, which enables clinicians to insert a sheath or catheter into the peripheral vasculature.
ProSolv Cardiovascular, a Fujifilm company, has signed a new sole source agreement with McLaren Health Care of Flint, Mich., to implement cardiovascular image and information systems (CVIIS) for cardiac catheterization and echocardiography at all McLaren facilities.
|
An international study on CT perfusion imaging at 15 medical centers in eight countries, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, have enrolled the first dozen patients to figure out how well various imaging tests can measure the degree of blockage or narrowing in any particular artery and their use in predicting patients who need catheterization or angioplasty, or bypass surgery.
With the exception of evaluation and management services, nearly all services that cardiologists perform will see cuts ranging from 10 percent to more than 40 percent for individual services phased in over four years, according to the just-released Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule final rule. The cuts will be phased in over a four-year period, which is a slight change from the proposed rule.
The adoption of 64-slice CT scanners by U.S. cardiology practices has more than doubled over the past two years, according to a report released this month by market research firm IMV Medical Information Division.
In a development that researchers say could quell concerns about the value of costly CT scans to diagnose coronary artery blockages, the results from the CorE-64 study were published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results confirm that 64-slice CT scans can correctly identify people with major blood vessel disease and that they are nearly as accurate as invasive coronary angiography. The initial findings from CorE-64 were presented at the 2007 annual American Heart Association’s (AHA) Scientific Sessions last November. The results released this week reflect the study’s updated data.
Written by Lisa Fratt
Savvy cardiology departments tap into CVIS to engineer cost-savings, streamline workflow and better patient care.
|
RSS 
The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.