Medical Devices Today

Women's Health: Building Interventional Gynecology

Article preview from Medtech Insight- August, 2010

This article was adapted from "Building Interventional Gynecology," which appeared in START-UP, June 2010.

Changing Times Raise Barriers to Device Innovation

Article preview from Medtech Insight- August, 2010

While legal considerations play a role in determining if or how soon use of a medical device is adopted, other factors are now just as important and in some cases more important in influencing a provider's product selection process.

The Artificial Disc Bust: Lessons Learned

Article preview from Medtech Insight- August, 2010

The artificial disc market, at least in the US, has yet to take off. In 2009, sales of artificial discs reached close to $150 million a far cry from the $1+ billion projected in 2005. So what happened and what does the future hold?

Wound Care: Finding a Niche

Article preview from Medtech Insight - August, 2010

The relatively open nature of the wound care market has created a golden opportunity for manufacturers to step up and introduce a variety of new products, although rarely is new a signal of true innovation in this space. And that, in turn, has created a broad, diverse, and fragmented industry, as demonstrated by the packed exhibit hall at the April 2010 meeting of the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care and the Wound Healing Society.

Seeking New Options for Prostate Cancer

Article preview from Medtech Insight - August, 2010

Recent reports questioning the benefits of early prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment have raised an industry-wide debate that has been fueled by the limitations of prostate-specific antigen tests, currently the standard of care for early prostate cancer detection. While the industry searches to improve the use of PSA tests, urologists are asking, "are we over treating our patients?" That question was repeatedly voiced in a number of forums at the American Urological Association's 2010 Annual Meeting. As for a definitive answer to the question, it is a somewhat difficult task to get individual physicians to admit they are personally over treating patients; however, there is definitely a consensus-and a concern-that more patients than necessary are receiving treatments that put them at risk of serious side effects.

HRS 2010: Subcutaneous ICD Generates Excitement, Controversy

Article preview from Medtech Insight - June, 2010

In the years since the dawn of the ICD era in the 1980s, perhaps four expansions of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator have captured the imagination of electrophysiologists and signaled unqualified success for the major manufacturers of these life-saving devices. Now, a new generation of ICD--the S-ICD or totally subcutaneous ICD--has the potential to join those sophisticated devices as the next truly evolutionary development in the field. Interest in the S-ICD picked up steam this spring in Denver at the 31st annual scientific sessions of the Heart Rhythm Society, where researchers presented the latest clinical results with the device.