Re: EKG to Go A new handheld heart monitor and subscription service may assuage heart-attack fears

Are you talking about a Holter Monitor? I had that about a week ago.
Second time I've worn one. No word from my Cardio, so guess it was OK. I see
him tomorrow. (I have Atrial Fib.) I had been short of breath, mostly at
night. Maybe the weather..Much better after the weather cleared up for a few
days. Now it's foggy in the morning and I'm feeling something's going on if
I get up in the night..
They put 5 stickums on me and a clip to hold the box for 24 hours..Nel

> http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_15874,304,p1.html
>
>
> Bill
> ____________________
>
>
> Friday, November 11, 2005
>
> EKG to Go
> A new handheld heart monitor and subscription service may assuage
> heart-attack fears -- for people who can afford it.
>
> By Lauren Gravitz
>
> Chest pain, shortness of breath, indigestion, backache, nausea: they could
> be symptoms of a myocardial infarction -- or they could mean you have the
> flu. Many people are reluctant to wake their doctor at 1:00 a.m. over a
> case of indigestion -- but if they're really in the throes of a heart
> attack, waiting it out is the worst possible thing to do.
>
> Enter EKGuard, a portable gadget and subscription service now available
> for the first time in the United States. EKGuard provides clients with a
> handheld electrocardiogram (EKG) monitor and a 24-hour call center staffed
> by cardiac specialists. Their goal: to drastically reduce the time between
> the onset of a heart attack and a patient's arrival at the hospital.
>
> "The biggest problem when it comes to heart disease is that people aren't
> acting fast enough," says Jay Lichtenstein, EKGuard's president and CEO.
> "Typically, there's about four to six hours between when people feel
> symptoms and when they seek help. But after two hours, a person's chances
> of dying double -- her heart muscle suffers permanent damage because it's
> not getting oxygen." And the greater the damage, the lower the chances of
> survival.
>
> Currently, EKGuard is available only in New York, Connecticut, and New
> Jersey. All calls are channeled to a center in mid-town Manhattan, where
> the phones are answered by cardiac doctors, nurses, and EMTs. When a
> customer signs up for EKGuard, the company sends a handheld EKG monitor.
> They also take a customer's medical history, contact his or her doctor and
> cardiologist, and explain how they should take a baseline EKG, for
> reference by cardiac specialists.
>
> The portable monitor has three wires; placed in the right spots on the
> body, they record data from 12 different leads, like a standard hospital
> or ambulance EKG. When collected, the data build a picture of how
> efficiently electrical impulses are traveling through the heart. To
> transmit the EKG readings to the call center, the device translates the
> information into sound and plays it over a phone line to a computerized
> receiving station, where it is reconfigured into an EKG chart that can be
> analyzed for irregularities.
>
> The technology itself isn't new: The device EKGuard uses (manufactured by
> an Israeli company, Aerotel Medical Systems) was approved by the U.S. Food
> and Drug Administration in 2000. But legal and practical issues stalled
> the development of the call-center service for years. Most doctors, for
> instance, are licensed solely in the state where they practice, so the
> call center had to hire medical staff who could advise clients from each
> state where the company does business.
>
>
>
> Now that the company is up and running stateside, Lichtenstein says, they
> plan to refine the technology. The next step: adding Bluetooth wireless
> capabilities to the device, so that it can communicate with a cell phone
> or a PDA.
>
> Companies like EKGuard are already operating in Israel, England,
> Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. More than 120,000 people
> in Israel alone are using a similar service, according to Lichtenstein,
> and a study by one company found that the technology helped its customers
> cut emergency-room visits by 30 percent. Even more telling, the average
> time it took for heart attack victims to call for help after their first
> symptoms appeared dropped from four hours to around 40 minutes.
>
> In the United States, "as many as two-thirds of patients with heart
> attacks don't arrive at the hospital for treatment until four of five
> hours after their symptoms started," says cardiologist Mark Apfelbaum,
> chief of the Interventional Cardiology Network at New York's Columbia
> University Medical Center and a member of EKGuard's medical advisory
> board. "And any time you cut hours off time to treatment, fewer people are
> going to die."
>
> EKGuard encourages their subscribers to call at the first sign of
> trouble -- as well they should, if they want to get their money's worth.
> The service costs between $499 and $599 to start up (depending on the term
> of the contract), with subsequent monthly fees run $69-79.
>
> "With this service available, I think patients will have much more of an
> inclination to call 10 or 15 minutes after their symptoms start," says
> Apfelbaum. "We can see immediately on the EKG if it is, indeed, a heart
> attack. We call 911, we get the ambulance to the patient, call the closest
> hospital, have the [catheterization] lab ready and waiting, and can shave
> hours off treatment time in heart attack patients."
>
> The service will be most helpful for certain groups: those who've already
> been diagnosed with heart disease, who have had at least one heart attack
> already, who have had angioplasty, or who have other serious concerns
> about their cardiac health. But the company is also courting the "worried
> well" -- people with high risk factors, such as hypertension and high
> cholesterol, but no history of the disease
>
> For that reason, among others, not everyone is buying what EKGuard has to
> sell. "Patients who are worried enough to call someone because they're
> having chest symptoms really need to be seen by a physician, and been seen
> in an emergency room," says Richard Stein, MD, a spokesperson for the
> American Heart Association (AHA) and a cardiologist at Beth Israel Medical
> Center in New York City.
>
> Stein argues that a normal EKG doesn't always carry enough information for
> a doctor to know whether there's cause for concern. "Somewhere between 20
> percent of men and 25 percent of women have symptoms during a heart attack
> that aren't classic," he says, adding that early EKGs don't necessarily
> show telltale signs. Often, additional EKGs and blood tests are needed in
> order to rule out a heart attack, says Stein.
>
> "I don't think that the assurance EKGuard can give is one I would want my
> patients to have," Stein says.
>
> Lichtenstein, however, thinks that many of the people who might purchase
> his product and phone the call center are the type who might otherwise do
> nothing at all. "Research by the AHA has found that people just won't call
> 911" during possible cardiac emergencies, Lichtenstein says. But he
> believes they will call EKGuard.
>
> EKGuard will be available in five to eight more states within a year, and
> nationwide by 2010, Lichtenstein says.
>
> Meanwhile, the medical community has yet to pass judgment on handheld EKG
> units. Stein and others would like to see the results of clinical trials
> before they give their endorsement; while many others seem optimistic,
> given the technology's success in other countries.
>
> If the service saves someone's life, the steep startup cost will seem like
> a small price to pay, of course. On the other hand, if EKGuard creates a
> false sense of security for those who should instead be racing to an
> emergency room, cardiologists may not be quick to embrace it.
>
>


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