Even the vaunted Cleveland Clinic can't seem to read news about stroke. This is going to be an expensive short term test. Do they not know that the Qualcomm Xprize for the tricorder has selected 10 finalists? How long before this comes to fruition and makes the expensive and time-consuming MRI and CT scans obsolete? We also shouldn't need neurologists on call to interpret those scans.
But do you really think your hospital will recommend this when it goes to production? It's a neurologist job killer and I doubt the stroke department head will recommend reducing head count unless you call the hospital president and make the case.
http://medcitynews.com/2014/10/cleveland-clinics-top-10-medical-innovations-2015/
1. Mobile Stroke Unit Time lost is brain lost.
High-tech ambulances bring the emergency department straight to the
patient with stroke symptoms. Using telemedicine, in-hospital stroke
neurologists interpret symptoms via broadband video link, while an
onboard paramedic, critical care nurse and CT technologist perform
neurological evaluation and administer t-PA after stroke detection,
providing faster, effective treatment for the affected patient. (Do they not know that tPA has only a 12% efficacy rate?)
2. Dengue Fever Vaccine One mosquito bite is all it
takes. More than 50 to 100 million people in more than 100 countries
contract the dengue virus each year. The world’s first vaccine has been
developed and tested, and is expected to be submitted to regulatory
groups in 2015, with commercialization expected later that year.
3. Cost-effective, Fast, Painless Blood-Testing Have
the days of needles and vials come to an end? The new art of blood
collection uses a drop of blood drawn from the fingertip in a virtually
painless procedure. Test results are available within hours of the
original draw and are estimated to cost as little as 10% of the
traditional Medicare reimbursement.
4. PCSK9 Inhibitors for Cholesterol Reduction Effective
statin medications have been used to reduce cholesterol in heart
disease patients for over two decades, but some people are intolerant
and cannot benefit from them. Several PCSK9 inhibitors, or injectable
cholesterol lowering drugs, are in development for those who don’t
benefit from statins. The FDA is expected to approve the first PCSK9 in
2015 for its ability to significantly lower LDL cholesterol to levels
never seen before.
5. Antibody-Drug Conjugates Chemotherapy, the only
form of treatment available for treating some cancers, destroys cancer
cells and harms healthy cells at the same time. A promising new approach
for advanced cancer selectively delivers cytotoxic agents to tumor
cells while avoiding normal, healthy tissue.
6. Checkpoint Inhibitors Cancer kills approximately 8
million people annually and is difficult to treat, let alone cure.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have allowed physicians to make
significantly more progress against advanced cancer than they’ve
achieved in decades. Combined with traditional chemotherapy and
radiation treatment, the novel drugs boost the immune system and offer
significant, long-term cancer remissions for patients with metastatic
melanoma, and there is increasing evidence that they can work on other
types of malignancies.
7. Leadless Cardiac Pacemaker Since 1958, the
technology involved in cardiac pacemakers hasn’t changed much. A
silver-dollar-sized pulse generator and a thin wire, or lead, inserted
through the vein kept the heart beating at a steady pace. Leads, though,
can break and crack, and become infection sites in 2 percent of cases.
Vitamin-sized wireless cardiac pacemakers can be implanted directly in
the heart without surgery and eliminate malfunction complications and
restriction on daily physical activities.
8. New Drugs for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
Nearly 80,000 American adults with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis may
breathe easier in 2015 with the recent FDA-approval of two new
experimental drugs. Pirfenidone and nintedanib slow the disease progress
of the lethal lung disease, which causes scarring of the air sacs.
Prior to these developments, there was no known treatment for IPF, in
which life expectancy after diagnosis is just three to five years.
9. Single-Dose Intra-Operative Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer
Finding and treating breast cancer in its earliest stages can
oftentimes lead to a cure. For most women with early-stage breast
cancer, a lumpectomy is performed, followed by weeks of radiation
therapy to reduce the likelihood of recurrence. Intra-operative
radiation therapy, or IORT, focuses the radiation on the tumor during
surgery as a single-dose, and has proven effective as whole breast
radiation.
10. New Drug for Heart Failure Angiotensin-receptor neprilysin inhibitor,
or ARNI, has been granted “fast-track status” by the FDA because of its
impressive survival advantage over the ACE inhibitor enalapril, the
current “gold standard” for treating patients with heart failure. The
unique drug compound represents a paradigm shift in heart failure
therapy.
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