A clinical paper presented by Dr. Rodney White titled "Sac Remodeling with the Powerlink(R) Stent Graft for abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA)" suggests that the Powerlink design may provide greater long-term benefit than traditional surgical techniques.
Dr. White, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Associate Chair, Department of Surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Principal Investigator at LA BioMed, states that three years following treatment with the Powerlink(R) System, patients experienced decreases in aneurysm sac diameter and volume, and less angulation of the aorta.
Endologix's Powerlink System is an endoluminal stent graft for treating AAA. AAA is a weakening of the wall of the aorta, the largest artery in the body, resulting in a balloon-like enlargement. Once AAA develops, it continues to enlarge and, if left untreated, becomes increasingly susceptible to rupture. The overall patient mortality rate for ruptured AAA is approximately 75%, making it the thirteenth leading cause of death in the United States. In spite of the success of minimally invasive treatment of AAA, there remain 50,000 to 60,000 patients who still undergo the traditional surgery, many due to concerns about the long-term results of the stent graft procedure itself.
"These results are based on our retrospective study that investigated changes in aneurysm sac anatomy, including maximum diameter of the aneurysm, volume of the aneurysm sac, length from the renal arteries to the aortic bifurcation and angulation of the abdominal aorta, during a three-year period in patients treated with a Powerlink System," said Dr. White. To contact Rodney White, MD, please call David Feuerherd at 310-215-0234 / 310-222-2820 or e-mail him at df@issuesmanagement.com.
Reverse epidemiology: a spurious hypothesis or a hardcore reality?
Source: Blood Purification. 2005;23(1):57-63
In a recently published article entitled "Reverse epidemiology: a spurious hypothesis or a hardcore reality?" Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, MD, PhD, a principal investigator at LA BioMed, argues that reverse epidemiology is for certain specific sub-groups of the population a hardcore reality. For example, in maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients, associations between demographic, clinical and laboratory values and mortality, including cardiovascular death, are significantly different and, in some cases, in the opposite direction of those derived from the general population. This phenomenon, termed 'reverse epidemiology', is not limited to MHD patients but is also observed in populations that encompass an estimated 20 million Americans including those with an advanced age, heart failure, malignancies, and AIDS. A significant portion of this reversal may be due to the overwhelming effect of the malnutrition-inflammation complex syndrome (MICS). Since two thirds of MHD patients die within 5 years of initiation of dialysis treatment, traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as obesity, hypercholesterolemia and hypertension cannot exert a long-term deleterious impact, and instead, their short-term beneficial effects on MICS provides a survival advantage. To contact the principal investigator of the study, Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, MD, PhD, please call David Feuerherd at 310-215-0234 / 310-222-2820 or e-mail him at df@issuesmanagement.com