Royal Phillips Electronics (RPE) and
Hansen Medical have recently signed a technology merger for combining the former’s Allura Xper X-Ray system with the latter’s Sensei Robotic Catheter System to significantly improve diagnosis, operation and overall treatment of a prominent heart disorder of differently beating hearts, or arrhythmias.
Cardiac arrhythmia, or dysrhythmia, is one of any combination of fast or slow and regular or irregular heartbeats due to non-standard
electrical conduction in the heart. Each manifestation has its own sub categorical name – some examples are Bradycardias, Automaticity, Fibrillation - and all are collectively known as arrhythmias. This condition may lead to cardiac arrest, occasionally strokes, and is known to be sometimes fatal. Even more alarming is that arrhythmias account for at least twenty five percent of Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVD’s), which in turn are responsible for 50% of all deaths on this planet. In the US alone close to a
million people die of CVD’s and this translates to 250,000 deaths possibly caused by arrhythmias.
None of the variants should be confused with a milder and relatively harmless form called sinus arrhythmia, which is difference in heart rates while breathing in and out caused either by extreme excitement or breathing exercises such as yoga, and is also common in young children.
The
Allura Xper biplane X-Ray is a system which magnifies the heart topography with sharp contrast, well defined mages, precision controlled X-ray dosage, and displays in 3D. It is tailor made for emergency interventional cardiology, paediatric cardiology and electrophysiology (EP) – behaviour of electrical properties of living cells. The standout feature of its child heart monitoring is that with only one contrast – fluid used to differentiate and highlight affected areas - injection it still delivers double the data by virtue of two X-rays in two different planes.
The Sensei Robotic Catheter System allows the electro physician to sit comfortably in a marginally remote site at state of the art image controls, while manoeuvring a robotic 5 axis controller to guide fine wires and micro thin tubes from the groin to the affected areas in the heart. Suitable currents are pulsed to rectify the abnormalities causing irregularity. Visualization is achieved by technology compatible with existing equipment such as fluoroscopic, intracardiac ultrasound, and 3-D surface mapping devices.
The marriage of the two technologies will be primarily in the area of collecting images and delivering excellent 3D visualization to the physician. It will also build intelligence in the system to allow a physician to navigate intuitively.
Vivek Naik is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Vivek's articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jessica Kostek
