BOSTON—No device or lead failures or patient deaths have occurred among 454 patients with pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators undergoing MRI scans as part of The MagnaSafe Registry, according to a presentation May 9 at the Heart Rhythm Society's 33rd annual scientific sessions.
Biotronik has received European approval for the market release of its Evia HF-T pacemaker series, a cardiac resynchronization therapy-pacemaker (CRT-P) device approved for use in an MRI environment.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) acknowledged the recent downward trend in Medicare spending and utilization on medical imaging procedures in its annual March Report to Congress, a move applauded by the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance.
Patients treated at higher-spending hospitals in Canada saw better overall outcomes, according to a study published in the March 14 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers concluded that despite Canada having fewer specialized healthcare resources compared with the U.S., Canadians may be using resources and medical technology more efficiently.
Neuroimaging practices for stroke patients may be unnecessarily costly and redundant, with substantial increases in MRI utilization supplementing, rather than replacing, CT use, according to a study published in the February edition of
Annals of Neurology.
Medtronic has received CE Mark and launched the CapSure Sense MRI SureScan pacing leads, which are approved for use during an MRI.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has reversed a lower court decision and held that installed MRI and PET/CT systems at Northeastern Pennsylvania Imaging Center should be treated as personal property for sales tax purposes.
The University of Oxford has installed Siemens Healthcare's Magnetom 7T whole-body MRI system, and plans to use the system for clinical neuroscience and cardiology research.
Infusion of cardiosphere-derived stem cells into patients who had had heart attacks can help regenerate healthy heart muscle, according to a prospective, randomized trial published Feb. 13 in The Lancet.
CT angiography (CTA) protocol developments designed to speed imaging and optimize arterial opacification may have an unintentional side effect and overestimate acute ischemic infarct size, according to a study published in the February edition of
Radiology. The discrepancies could have inappropriately excluded up to 90 percent of eligible stroke patients from reperfusion therapy if they had been used to inform treatment decision making.
Inflammation, as assessed by 18F-FDG-PET uptake and histology, is increased in plaques containing high-risk morphological (HRM) features and rises with increasing number of HRM, according to a study in the January issue of
Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging. Study authors suggested that data support the concept that inflammation accumulates relative to the burden of morphological abnormalities.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if in five or 10 years this procedure replaced awake [deep brain simulation surgery],” Jason M. Schwalb, MD, director of movement disorder and behavioral neurosurgery at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, said in an interview. However, Schwalb confirmed that the data to support intraoperative MRI as a complete replacement for the conventional awake technique are not yet available.
The services and allowed charges by cardiologists for treating Medicare patients increased dramatically between 1999 and 2008, according to an analysis published online Jan. 10 in
Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Much of the growth was linked to noninvasive imaging, with resting echocardiograms and nuclear stress testing fueling the lion’s share of growth.
In the wake of the passage of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA), there were concerns that advanced imaging procedures would shift from private offices to hospital outpatient departments and that access would be restricted. According to a study in the January issue of the
Journal of the American College of Radiology, while there hasn’t been a large shift away from offices toward hospitals, the DRA did affect imaging volume and seems to have resulted in some loss of access to nuclear medicine.
EMRs, robotic surgery and transcatheter heart valve implantation rank among the technologies that ECRI Institute is urging hospital executives to keep an eye on in 2012.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has informed the American College of Radiology that “operational limitations” will prevent them from applying the imaging professional component Multiple Procedure Payment Reduction (MPPR) to group practices beginning Jan. 1, 2012. Therefore, CMS will not apply the professional component MPPR for imaging services performed by separate physicians in the same group practice for 2012.
The U.S. House of Representative passed the Middle Class Tax Relief & Job Creation Act (H.R. 3630) Dec. 13. Among other things, H.R. 3630 prevents an across the board 27 percent cut to Medicare physician reimbursement statutorily required by the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. The bill provides physicians with a 1 percent increase in Medicare payments for 2012 and 2013.
The U.K. House of Commons issued a report Oct. 12 detailing multiple concerns with National Health Service’s (NHS) oversight of MRI, CT and linear accelerator purchasing and operations.
SAN ANTONIO—“If we simplify the problem, we simplify the development of solutions,” Clayton M. Christensen, MBA, the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, said Oct. 26 at CHIME11, the Fall CIO Forum.
A study published in the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging found that intensive treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs significantly reduced the amount of cholesterol in artery-clogging plaque, while also showing that MRI scanning could become a powerful new tool for assessing how well the drugs are working.
