Hearts Online
Reported March 18, 2005
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) — Is your heart online? It could be the wave of the future for the millions of Americans with congestive heart failure. Now a new monitor being tested in clinical trials could give the Internet highway new meaning. Gerald Rosecrants is picking up debris in his yard without worrying a bit about his heart condition. Gerald is just an Internet click from his doctor with a device he hooks up to a cradle that transmits daily heart activity. Rosecrants holds the device to his implanted monitor and then places it in the holder. In three to five minutes, Philip Adamson, M.D., can then instantly see how Rosecrants’s heart is working. “We can see changes that occur that they don’t even know are happening, and those changes will give us a clue that we need to change medications — adjust their diuretics, for example, their water pills that they take, and that has been very successful,” Dr. Adamson, of The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, tells Ivanhoe. Rosecrants says, “It gives you a feeling of security … realization that they’re right there.” According to Dr. Adamson, the high-tech device quickly pays for itself when you consider the cost of hospitalization and the sense of security. “Almost 100 percent of patients have enthusiastically embraced this because they feel secure. They feel like there’s someone’s taking care of them — watching them.” For Rosecrants, the threat of having big brother watch over him is a good thing. Dr. Adamson says that heart failures cause as many as 200,000 deaths each year. He says this study will also open the doors for monitoring other organs in the future. CLICK HERE TO READ PHILIP ADAMSON, M.D.’s FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEW, AS REPORTED BY IVANHOE.COM.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Philip Adamson, M.D.
Congestive Heart Failure Program
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
(405) 271-2916 ext. 0
philip-adamson@ouhsc.edu