CardiacAssist Inc. announced that 200th procedure was completed successfully using its TandemHeart System at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. The TandemHeart System is FDA-cleared and CE-Marked for short-term extracorporeal circulatory support. It can be placed rapidly by both cardiac surgeons in an operating room and interventional cardiologists in a cath lab to provide short-term circulatory support to patients requiring additional cardiac assistance.
In critically ill patients the device provides effective and reliable temporary circulatory support. The 200 cases have been performed at THI at SLEH primarily by cardiologists Biswajit Kar, M.D., and Pranav Loyalka, M.D., and by cardiac surgeons O.H. “Bud” Frazier, M.D., and Igor Gregoric, M.D. Hemodynamic support includes a high net blood-flow rate of up to five liters per minute in the catheterization lab or up to eight liters per minute in the OR—more than twice the amount from previous technologies and fully reimbursed by Medicare under existing DRG codes.
“The dedication and pursuit of excellence shown by the Texas Heart Institute and all TandemHeart users has been the critical key to our success,” said Michael Garippa, CEO and President of CardiacAssist. “TandemHeart sets a whole new paradigm for treating cardiac patients quickly and aggressively. In addition to being used to treat emergency patients, TandemHeart has also been used to support patients before, during, and after complex elective procedures,” added Garippa. “We applaud the teamwork and vision of the forward-thinking THI physicians in cardiology and cardiac surgery in the treatment of these seriously ill patients. Therefore we are extremely pleased to realize this historic milestone of 200 cases with the TandemHeart System, designed to become standard of care in extracorporeal circulatory support.”