ICU Management & Practice, ICU Volume 6 - Issue 3 - Autumn 2006

Biosite® Incorporated Introduces Triage® MeterPro™

www.biosite.com

 

Biosite® Incorporated recently unveiled its thirdgeneration testing platform, the Triage® MeterPro™ at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) 2006 Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, USA. According to a Biosite PRNewswire press release, the Triage MeterPro combines Biosite's rapid, easy-to-use technology with a more convenient user interface.

 

The Triage MeterPro is a portable, rapid testing platform designed to provide rapid, quantitative or qualitative results for immunoassays using urine, whole-blood or plasma and features comprehensive built-in quality control capabilities. The Triage MeterPro's user-friendly features are expected to make testing even easier to perform, while maintaining the high quality and performance standards of the existing Triage Meter platform. According to Biosite, enhancements to the Triage MeterPro include an alphanumeric keypad, 75 percent larger display, backlighting and faster printing. The Triage Meters also feature "Test Select™," enabling healthcare providers to customize test menus based on physician preference or patient presentation when using Triage Test Panels with multiple analytes. This allows customers to use the same multi-analyte Triage Panel but choose which assays to run at the time of testing.

 

Biosite's announcement assures that current and future Triage tests will continue to be compatible with the Triage MeterPro and the Triage MeterPlus. The Triage MeterPro is nowavailable in the United States and will launch internationally in the second half of 2006.

 

Recent Study Notes Automated CPR Device Helping Save Lives in One U.S. Community

www.zoll.com

The AutoPulse®, a portable device that is strapped around the chest and does cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) compressions automatically, has helped save lives in one U.S. community.

 

A study, appearing in the Journal of the AmericanMedical Association (JAMA),* tracked AutoPulse® usage by the Richmond Ambulance Authority (RAA), based in the state of Virginia.

 

The study found that, when compared to manual- CPR patients, AutoPulse patients showed higher rates of the following:

- Return of spontaneous circulation (34.5% vs. 20.2%);

- Survival to hospital admission (20.9% vs. 11.1%); and

- Survival to hospital discharge (9.7%vs. 2.9%).

 

The study compared 499 manual CPR cases and 284 cases using automated CPR, which involved the use of the AutoPulse. The study analyzed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases between January 2001 and March 2005 and evaluated data before and after RAA paramedics began using the AutoPulse.

 

The AutoPulse is designed to help improve blood flow to the heart and brain during sudden cardiac arrest by delivering continuous, uninterrupted chest compressions.*

 

According to its Medical Director Joseph P. Ornato, MD, RAA is the first EMS agency in the U.S. to have shown that significantly more patients can survive and be discharged from the hospital with use of the AutoPulse. *Clinical data available upon request.

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