This report originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of DOTmed Business News

Every day at hospitals across the country, life-saving tests and interventions play out in the cath/angio lab. In addition to diagnosing heart disease, an important measure of hospital quality is also assessed in this suite. It's a widely reported stopwatch on the effectiveness of health care delivery known as "door-to-balloon" time. If you can reduce that time, you've got the edge when you report to regulators and disclose performance data to the public.

"The 'door-to-balloon' is the time from somebody coming into the hospital with chest pain to the time they are diagnosed, brought into a cath suite and have angioplasty and a stent placed in their coronary artery," explained Richard Fabian, VP and Business Manager for CV and General X-ray, Philips Healthcare. "Door-to-balloon is becoming a more important metric because every minute that providers can shave off that time means they are saving lives." (The Brigham and Women's Hospital D2B record is 14 minutes.)
The total U.S. market for cath and angio capital equipment is roughly one billion dollars with about two-thirds devoted to cardiac applications and one-third to vascular. Within cardiac, electrophysiology components are a relatively small but growing slice of the pie chart, between $100 and $150 million. Angioplasty and stent placement predominate cath lab work, but vascular procedures are increasingly driving workflow.

DOTmed industry experts candidly report that the overall market for cardiac cath lab equipment is as flat as a panel detector at the moment. But encouragingly, capital investment persists due to the urgency to address the number one health problem of Americans - heart disease.

"We are seeing a continued investment in cardiovascular services by hospitals across the US. It still is a very profitable segment of the hospital, it still is an investment strategy for hospitals nationwide and we continue to see a focus there," said Erin Lange, General Manager, Americas Interventional Marketing, GE Healthcare.




"We saw an increased investment last year in electrophysiology (EP) which we do expect to continue this year. So it is one of the growth areas where hospitals are investing in their cardiovascular service line." She noted EP drivers including new technologies and procedures such as intracardiac echo (ICE) and new indications for pacemakers.

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