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New Multicenter Study Finds That Cardiac Function Measured During Stress Testing With Cheetah Medical's BIOREACTANCE(R) Noninvasive Technology Offers New Insights Into Heart Failure

Posted on: Friday, 2 October 2009, 06:00 CDT

TEL-AVIV, Israel and PORTLAND, Oregon, October 2 /PRNewswire/ --

- Bioreactance-based Noninvasive Measurements During Exertion Identified Abnormalities of Cardiovascular Function and Might be Useful for Indexing Disease Severity, Prognostication, and for Tracking Responses to Treatment in Clinical Practice and Trials

Results from a multicenter study of Cheetah Medical's Exercise Cardiac Output (ECO(R)) stress test protocol for chronic heart failure were published earlier this month in the Journal of Cardiac Failure, the official journal of the Heart Failure Society of America and the Japanese Heart Failure Society. With approximately 6 million Americans diagnosed with heart failure, it is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. After heart failure is diagnosed, the 1-year mortality rate is high, with 1in 5 dying. Eighty percent of men and 70% of women 65 years of age who have heart failure will die within 8 years, and one in 8 US deaths has HF mentioned on the death certificate. Unfortunately, heart failure specialists have limited tools with which to monitor heart failure progression, determine prognosis and response to treatment. Recently, it was shown that peak Cardiac Output and Peak Cardiac Power Output are the strongest predictors of heart failure severity, however access to these current methods is limited to a minute portion of heart failure patients due to cost and complexity of the devices.

In this study, Cheetah Medical's NICOM(R) System was used to continuously monitor the Cardiac Output response during exercise stress testing as well as Cardiac Power Output and a host of other hemodynamic parameters in patients with varying degrees of chronic heart failure and compared to the traditional method of measuring oxygen consumption which are obtained from analysis of expired gases. The results from both methods correlated extremely well, demonstrating the potential to use the NICOM system to routinely monitor heart failure patients without the significant limitations of expired breath gas technologies.

Matthew Maurer MD, Director of the Clinical Cardiovascular Research Laboratory for the Elderly, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and the study's Primary Investigator, said: "We continually search for practical means of assessing the status of our heart failure patients that are useful both for routine clinical practice and for clinical research. Although the usefulness of measuring oxygen consumption is well established, these data suggest that additional physiologic and prognostic information can be obtained using the NICOM, which is as easy to measure as an electrocardiogram and does not require special training for its interpretation."

Daniel Burkhoff, M.D., Ph.D., Medical Director of Cheetah Medical, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical School and a leading clinical researcher in the field of heart failure added, "With the results of this study showing good correlations to oxygen consumption and several prior independent studies showing that peak cardiac power can be even more predictive of outcomes, we are encouraged that we will see these measurements used more often in a variety of settings. Currently, the NICOM appears to offer the simplest solution for clinicians to measure cardiac output and power during exercise. We are planning a large multicenter study to confirm the prior smaller studies to prove the utility of peak cardiac power for predicting the risks of hospitalizations, the need for heart transplant, left ventricular assist devices and mortality."

About Cheetah Medical

Cheetah Medical delivers accurate noninvasive cardiac output (CO), noninvasive blood pressure (NIBP), stroke volume variation (SVV), total peripheral resistance (TPR) and other vital hemodynamic monitoring parameters to provide continuous, clinically actionable information for fluid and drug optimization in acute and ambulatory care settings, including intensive care, emergency, perioperative care, dialysis and outpatient cardiology. The NICOM(R) Noninvasive Cardiac Output & Hemodynamic Monitoring System uses Cheetah Medical's proprietary BIOREACTANCE(R) Technology, which has validated performance accuracy and faster directional changes compared to invasive CO measurement methods, with less potential costs and risks. Cheetah Medical worldwide headquarters are located in Tel-Aviv, Israel and its United States headquarters are located in Portland, Oregon. For more information, visit our website at http://www.cheetah-medical.com.

SOURCE Cheetah Medical Ltd

Source: PR Newswire

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