Each week we like to trawl the internet for interesting and unusual medical articles to bring to you, dear reader.

Here’s a bunch of interesting articles that caught our attention this week at SCHILLER Australia.

• Study Published Detailing Interaction of Tasers with Methamphetamine
• UV Tattoos as Possible Password Storage for Implantable Devices
• The Toxicity Of Second-Hand Smoke In Cars: Myth Into Fact
• GP-led Primary Health Care Teams A Great Way Forward, Australia
• New Heart Valve Implant Cuts Surgical Risks
• Social Networks Help The Medicine Go Down
• WiFi Medical Devices to Improve Patient Monitoring, Reimbursement
• GSM Scale Autonomously Keeps Tabs on Personal Weight Loss
• Up to bat on healthcare reform in Australia

For more links and other interesting observations you should follow us on Twitter.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

Around the web this week 20/04/10

Each week we like to trawl the internet for interesting and unusual medical articles to bring to you, dear reader.

Here’s a bunch of interesting articles that caught our attention this week at SCHILLER Australia.

• Ultrasensative Quantum Magnetic Detector Digs for Fetal Arrythmias
• Body 2.0 – Continuous Monitoring Of The Human Body
• Coffee drinking is not linked to heart rhythm disturbance
• Welcome Boost For Hospital Emergency Departments, Australia
• Good Start But More Needed In Aged Care, Australia
• Obesity in Pregnancy Ups Risk of Heart Defect in Baby
• Large Study Shows Chocolate Lowers Cardiovascular Risk
• Sleep Apnea Increases Stroke Risk

For more links and other interesting observations you should follow us on Twitter.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

Around the web this week 13/04/10

We could resist the lure no longer, SCHILLER Australia is now on twitter.

We won’t pretend to know exactly what we’re doing on twitter, however we will aim to add to the conversation rather than just promote our product range.

At this stage we’ll be concentrating on medical news, particularly focused on Cardiology as after all it is our speciality, however we’ll also be helping drive the further awareness of public access defibrillation.

If you’re keen to hear what we’ve got to say just follow us on twitter, and be sure to say hi.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

SCHILLER Australia is now on twitter

A CareFlight medical evacuation flight operated by Pel-Air from Apia (Western Samoa) to Melbourne was scheduled to land at Norfolk Island for a planned fuel stop on Wednesday evening when it encountered deteriorating weather conditions.

After several unsuccessful approaches and with diminishing fuel, the pilot-in-command, Captain Dominic James, made the decision to carry out a controlled landing onto the water off the coast of Norfolk Island.

The aircraft, a specially-equipped medical retrieval Westwind jet carried out a successful landing on the water and the patient, accompanying spouse and two medical crew as well as the pilots evacuated safely. They were rescued by boat and brought to the local Norfolk Island hospital for observation. The Captain reported that all passengers and crew did not have any apparent injuries.

Further details are on CareFlight’s website.

CareFlight are a valued client of SCHILLER Australia, having outfitted several of their retrieval aircraft with ARGUS ProLifecare patient monitors, so we are very happy to see that no one was injured in the ditching of this aircraft.

And we’d like to extend a big “dude you’re awesome” to the Captain Dominic James for his text book ditching.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

CareFlight pilot hailed as a hero

Orlando, FL (AHN) – A common test prescribed to detect heart problems can often lead doctors to misdiagnose a common heart condition, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the Henry Ford Hospital studied 500 patients and found a false positive reading for the condition, known as left ventricular hypertrophy, between 77 and 82 percent in patients screened by electrocardiogram. The researchers said they found a false negative reading between 6 and 7 percent in the same sample.

Doctors typically give several ECGs before diagnosing left ventricular hypertrophy.

The researchers said is a statement that CT scans were a more accurate way of diagnosing the condition. An ECG measures the electrical activity of a heartbeat and a CT scan uses X-rays to take clear and detailed images of the heart.

The study was presented at the American Heart Association’s annual scientific conference in Orlando, Florida.

[From Study: EKGs May Misdiagnose Common Heart Condition]

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

ECGs May Misdiagnose Common Heart Condition

By now many of us are familiar with Nintendo’s Wii Fit, if not you can find out more information here, well now we’ve got the Wii Vitality sensor, Nintendo’s new addition to their revolutionary Wiimote game controller was announced at the recent E3 gaming industry expo in the USA.

From the press release – “Nintendo’s newest groundbreaking product, the Wii Vitality Sensor, expands the appeal of video games. It will initially sense the user’s pulse and a number of other signals being transmitted by their bodies, and will then provide information to the users about the body’s inner world.”

Straight away the applications are obvious, apart from integration with the Wii Fit platform, there’s a host of medical potential in Children’s Hospitals all over the world. How much easier would it be to check on your patients vitals if it was in the form of a game?

It’s certainly a converging world now with all sorts of technologies merging and becoming useful in so many ways we’ve never dreamt of in the past.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

Nintendo Wii Vitality

The strengths of Holter ECG monitoring include its simplicity and the lack of need for patient activation. The continuous monitoring allows capture of asymptomatic arrhythmias or arrhythmias associated with loss of consciousness as well as documentation of circadian variation in arrhythmia occurrence.

However the regular 24-hour Holter ECG’s imposed a very limited period of monitoring to a very short window that is often inadequate to diagnose the cause of symptoms.

With SCHILLER’s new MICROVIT MT-101 nano Holter ECG Recorder, you may now monitor your patients heart activity up to 72 hours.

The MT-101 nano Holter Recorder is designed for 2 or 3-channel ECG recordings, depending on the ECG cable you use.

To view and analyse your recorded data you may simply transmit the patients data via integrated USB interface or external SD card reader to any computer, featuring the Medilog Darwin analysis system.

On a very user-friendly Windows Interface, the MT-200 Analysis Software executes the most complicated operations, such as:

• Analysis of 2 or 3 channels in different combinations
• ST-Analysis
• HR Trend overview
• HR Variability (Fire of Life)
• Pacemaker Templates
• Template Matching
• Reclassification in less than 2 seconds by ‘Drag & Drop’ function

When it comes to administrating and saving your data, the system enables:

• Generation of PDF files
• E-mail function
• Connection to the SCHILLER SEMA-200 Data Management System

Are you interested in trying SCHILLER’s new 72-hour Holter ECG System? Just give us a call and we’ll take care of the rest!

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

72 hour Holter Recordings with MT-101 nano

SCHILLER’s unique Multipulse Biowave® is a wave that is pulsed at a high frequency (chopped).

The pulsed wave is made up of two phases, where the current flows in two opposite directions (biphasic) with a fixed duration of 4 ms for each phase, regardless of the patient impedance. That duration has been found to be optimal for the excitation of myocardial cells, maximising the safety and effectiveness of the defibrillation.

Because a second capacitor is used to produce the second phase (negative), the amplitude of the phase is not necessarily identical to that prevalent at the end of the first phase. Consequently, it can be defined freely so as to obtain the amplitude that is best suited to the physiological needs of the heart.

The second phase is sized optimally, and the charges accumulated during the first phase in the myocardial cells can be eliminated completely at the end of the wave. As a result of that elimination, the re-excitation of the unstable cells is prevented, and therefore all the re-entry loops are blocked. The outcome is optimised defibrillation with the least possible energy.

This is how the greatest efficacy can be derived from a biphasic defibrillation wave.

Contact us today for further information and copies of clinical papers on SCHILLER’s unique Multipulse Biowave®.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

What makes the FRED easyport so unique?

Recently the British National Health Service evaluated the FRED easyport defibrillator, and here’s what they had to say about it.

An ideal defibrillator when size and weight are the most important features.

You can download the full report on the SCHILLER FRED easyport AED in PDF format from here.

If you would like to receive further information on the, or any other products in the SCHILLER range, do not hesitate to contact us.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

British NHS evaluate FRED easy AED

There are many after market suppliers of recording paper that claim to save you “big dollars” on your consumables purchases. These may be short -term savings but in the long run can cost you a lot of money.

We often receive calls from customers who are experiencing a problem associated with the printing function on their ECG machine. They tell us, “The machine will not print an ECG” or “Every time I press the print button the machine feeds extra sheets of paper after the ECG has been printed”

Both of these problems are consistently related to the use of cheap recording paper that is badly manufactured. Usually the paper registration mark is in the wrong place or commonly is too small. The black registration mark is very important because it is used to correctly position each sheet of paper so that the next ECG printed is in the correct position. The registration mark is recognized by a sensor that is positioned close to the print head. If it is too small or in the wrong position is will either be missed completely or will incorrectly position the recording paper.

We make dozens of service calls each month to fix print problems that are related to the use of cheap recording paper. As this is not covered under the machine’s warranty the customer always ends up with a service charge that far exceeds any savings they have made. So think twice when someone offers you a cheap price. In the long run it can actually cost you a lot of money.

© SCHILLER Australia 2010 - find further information on our website www.schiller.com.au, and you can now follow us on twitter.

Recording paper, think twice