Finally some good news for Heartstream. If I were one of their sales people, I would print thousands of copies of these reports and carry them to every meeting. We all know the foreRunner works. Now that we know they are safer than traditional defibrillators, Heartstream should start breaking into the huge emergency services (ambulance) business which is why I bought this stock in the first place. Besides, just think of the potential lawsuits if an ambulance service uses the old technology and someone suffers heart damage that could have been avoided???
BusinessWire, Wednesday, April 23, 1997 at 07:46
SEATTLE--(BW HealthWire)--April 23, 1997--
Revealing data presented at the American Heart Association's Public
Access Defibrillation II conference cites benefits of low-energy
technology Three new studies presented at the American Heart Association's Public Access Defibrillation II conference held in Washington, DC on April 17-19 reveal that an innovative electrical therapy is advantageous for treating ventricular fibrillation (VF), the primary cause of sudden cardiac arrest, the number one cause of death in the United States. The electrical therapy, called a biphasic waveform, is delivered to patients using an external heart-starting device called a defibrillator. The studies show that biphasic waveforms require significantly less energy than traditional monophasic shocks to effectively treat VF and also cause less trauma to the heart.
The data from all three studies strongly support previous findings in studies conducted by Heartstream, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTST).
Heartstream's ForeRunner Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) is the
only external defibrillator commercially available in the United
States that uses biphasic waveform technology.
In a paper by Vyacheslav A. Vostikov, M.D., chief of the
electrical defibrillation group at the Institute of General
Reanimoltolgy in Moscow, the author reports that "in 43 of the 53 (81
percent) episodes of spontaneous VF (in human beings), (biphasic)
defibrillation was successful with shocks less than or equal to 95
Joules." This high level of success was achieved with approximately
half the energy required by older monophasic shocks.
Similar results were reported in two separate papers presented by
researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Cardiac
Rhythm Management Laboratory. The authors concluded that in an
animal study, biphasic waveforms defibrillated with 51 percent less
energy and 57 percent less peak current than monophasic shocks.
The authors also determined that animals treated with low energy
biphasic waveforms had evidence of significantly less heart
dysfunction following treatment than those treated with monophasic
shocks. However, the authors also noted that too little is known at
this time to determine whether biphasic waveforms will ultimately
improve patient outcome. |
