New CardioFocus HeartLight Excalibur Balloon Cleared in Europe
CardioFocus, a company out of Marlborough, Massachusetts, won the European CE Mark to introduce its new HeartLight Excalibur Balloon for treatment of atrial fibrillation. The device is based on the company’s previously FDA approved HeartLight ablation system, but is designed to make procedures easier and faster by improving the compliance of the balloon and by being able to ablate larger tissue targets than before.
The company’s HeartLight technology is used during pulmonary vein isolation procedures, using the balloon to isolate the target area and providing the physician with a direct view of the tissue be...
Source: Medgadget - September 29, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Cardiology Critical Care Source Type: blogs
I vow not to call my patients “difficult.” Here’s why.
I am not a doctor. (Yet.) I am a novice third-year medical student, somewhat able to perform and document a physical exam on a sleeping child, to dial the correct number to call a consult and to make wild guesses about chest X-rays (“I see a consolidation?”). I write about medicine not from a position of experience, but of malleability. I want to become like the best doctors I see.
Towards that goal, so far, so good. My first rotation in the hospital confirms the stereotype that pediatricians are among the nicest and most patient doctors. Indeed, I am already cataloging the dialogue on morning rounds of the s...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 9, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/weisheng-mao" rel="tag" > Weisheng Mao < /a > Tags: Education Hospital-Based Medicine Neurology Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Camera Sees Endoscope Tip Through Body by Eliminating Scattered Light
Safely tracking the location of the tip of an endoscope while it’s inside the body has posed a serious challenge for biomedical engineers. The benefit of tracking can help to guide an endoscope to its target quickly and accurately. X-rays can be used, but unnecessary radiation is not advised.
Now researchers from University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University in Scotland have devised a method of seeing the endoscope tip through the body by detecting the light emitted at its tip. The technology relies on a camera able to detect individual photons and to elucidate how long they took to travel from the light source....
Source: Medgadget - September 6, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: News Source Type: blogs
When the Doctor is Away, Incident-To Billing is Out of Play
You're reading When the Doctor is Away, Incident-To Billing is Out of Play, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
When your physicians are out of the office, it’s easy to forget taking incident-to billing out of the lineup. Failure to do so, however, is a violation that can land your medical practice in hot water.
What is Incident-To Billing?
Incident-to billing refers to billing services provided by a nonphysician practitioner (NPP), such as a physician assistant, nurse practitioner, midwife, therapist, etc....
Source: PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement - August 25, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Dillon Tags: featured Source Type: blogs
Why Racism Is The Antithesis Of Self Development
I spent a day or so in the ER this past weekend.
The details aren’t important other than to say chest pain and shortness of breath don’t necessarily mean you are about to become an ex-Life Coach and shuffle off this mortal coil.
During the time I spent there I probably came into direct contact with about 50 members of staff.
That’s a lot in such a short period of time until you realize I had 3 lots of blood taken, 2 chest x-rays, 2 nuclear medicine scans, a stress test and 2 CT scans over about a 24-hour period.
I don’t like watching TV lying in bed and my phone service was intermittent at best so between the batt...
Source: A Daring Adventure - August 21, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tim Brownson Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
New Tissue Glue Can be Clearly Seen With X-Rays and Ultrasound
Nanoparticles made with a shell of silica (SiO2) and a core of radiopaque tantalum oxide (TaOx) are used to make a tissue adhesive and visible to ultrasound, X-ray, and fluorescent imaging.
Researchers at Korea’s Institute for Basic Science and Seoul National University Hospital have designed and tested a glue for binding tissues that also works as a contrast agent for X-rays, CTs, and ultrasound imaging modalities. This is the first such tissue glue to have this set of properties, and, if approved for clinical applications, may end up displacing other adhesives because it can be later easily monitored as to how it&...
Source: Medgadget - July 20, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Emergency Medicine Military Medicine Nanomedicine Surgery Source Type: blogs
Medical Device Coating Points To and Kills Bacteria
Researchers at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) in Saudi Arabia, not to be confused with KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), have developed a special nanoparticle coating that can be used to give the surfaces of medical devices antibacterial properties.
The coating is made of gold nanoclusters containing lysozyme enzymes, an antibacterial agent, fused into a polymer matrix. The nanoparticles also contain kanamycin, an antibiotic. This formulation keeps the nanoparticles from leeching into the body while only being triggered to release the kanamycin in the presence of b...
Source: Medgadget - July 17, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
The Top Medical Specialties with the Biggest Potential in the Future
Some say technology will replace 80% of doctors in the future. I disagree. Instead, technology will finally allow doctors to focus on what makes them good physicians: treating patients and innovating, while automation does the repetitive part of the work. While every specialty will benefit from digital health, some will especially thrive due to these innovations. Here, we enlisted the medical fields with the biggest potential for development in the future.
No More Repetition – Doctors of the Future Will Treat and Innovate
Artificial intelligence, wearable sensors, virtual reality, medical robots – these disrup...
Source: The Medical Futurist - July 11, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Future of Medicine Health Sensors & Trackers Personalized Medicine AI artificial intelligence gc4 Healthcare IBM Innovation medical technology wearables Source Type: blogs
High Tech Tuesday!
Photo download via xray delta oneBy Crabby McSlackerShould we be worried about the impact of so much easily accessible technology on our fragile human brains?There is much hand-wringing on the subject, and even a little research out there. Are portable machines turning our minds into mush, screwing with our relationships, infantalizing us, and disconnecting us from reality? Not to mention causing us to walk in front of buses and plunge off piers into large bodies of water?Maybe! But that's not today's post.Today I'm just doing a quick lazy show-and-tell about a couple of recent technological finds. One of them I ...
Source: Cranky Fitness - July 11, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Crabby McSlacker Source Type: blogs
High-Res Images of the Brain ’s White Matter Could Help Researchers Understand MS
I’ve always had an image in my head of what the so-called white matter of the brain — the part most affected by multiple sclerosis (MS) — looks like. Boy, was I wrong!
We’ve all seen the sliced images of our brains produced by those noisy MRI machines. They look somewhat like X-rays but show the soft tissue of the body rather than just the bones.
Those of us with multiple sclerosis have also — unfortunately — seen lesions on our white matter in the MRI images and perhaps even brain atrophy, or “black holes.”
I suppose that we’ve all also imagined what that stuff really looks like, and scientists at C...
Source: Life with MS - July 5, 2017 Category: Neurology Authors: Trevis Gleason Tags: multiple sclerosis advances in MS research MS Around the Globe MS doctors MS in the news trevis gleason Source Type: blogs
Hidden Hip Fractures
An elderly woman arrived via ambulance at the emergency department after being knocked to the ground. Right hip pain prevented her from getting up. She had bilateral hip replacements, and was concerned that the right one could have come out of place. The area she indicated didn't seem dislocated. There was range or motion of the hip, and the leg was not shortened. Certainly, x-rays would confirm this.The prostheses were intact. She had neither a hip fracture nor a dislocation. The patient still complained of pain, and was unable to ambulate. On closer inspection, the right superior pubic rami's inferior aspect had a ...
Source: Lions and Tigers and Bears - July 3, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Intramuscular Lipoma: Plain Xray
AP and Lateral radiograph of the forearm of a middle aged female ave a history of a painless soft tissue lump in her forearm. Images show adiolucent mass arising within the musculature at the mid portion of her forearm possibly indicating intramuscular lipoma.Famous Radiology Blog http://www.sumerdoc.blogspot.com
TeleRad Providers at www.teleradproviders.com Mail us at sales@teleradproviders.com (Source: Sumer's Radiology Site)
Source: Sumer's Radiology Site - June 29, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: Sumer Sethi Source Type: blogs
Side Effects Vs. Costs
This morning an email on the discontinuation of a certain drug which the article says is a good thing because it will save billions of dollars. The drug in question isTKI and is used to treat CML. It works well at putting people in remission but comes with a high financial cost, $147,000 per year and causes many side effects.This made me think. Which is more important - financial cost or side effects?I am torn on this one. A drug that costs $147,000 per year is phenomenally expensive. If it was a branded drug on my insurance I would be charged probably 40% of that cost. Could I afford that? Even without pulling out a calcu...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - June 27, 2017 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: medication costs side effects Source Type: blogs
Radiologists Receive the Most Inbound Referrals of Any Specialist
Referrals are a main facet of medicine ’s ecosystem. Amino, a platform that synthesizes data from insurance companies to create a transparent healthcare marketplace, wanted to get a full perspective of how referrals work. So they evaluated211 millioninter-specialty referrals from 2016 to determine the top 50 most common referrals. They found that radiologists received more inbound referrals than any other specialist.Amino ’s data team discovered that internists, family practitioners, emergency medicine, pediatricians, and OB/GYNs made the most outbound referrals, and family practitioners and ER physicians had the highe...
Source: radRounds - June 24, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
