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A significant population of critically ill Americans may benefit from a unique, minimally invasive heart monitoring device recently cleared for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The new technology was designed to enable clinicians to more easily monitor patients' conditions in a critical care setting.
The new FloTrac sensor has been launched in the U.S. by Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE:EW), the world's leader in hemodynamic monitoring technology. The sensor, which connects to a catheter that is usually already in place in many critically ill patients' arteries, works with Edwards' new Vigileo monitor to combine data from the arterial pressure line with other patient parameters to automatically calculate a patient's cardiac output on a continuous basis.
Until now, patients whose conditions required monitoring beyond simple blood pressure measurements, but who...