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The American College of Cardiology (ACC) is reporting that a virtual reality simulator is a good way for physicians to learn how to perform risky catheter procedures such as carotid angiography. The study, to be published in the May 2, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, investigated how a virtual reality simulator, the Procedicus Vascular Interventional System Trainer (VIST), a product of Mentice AB of Gothenburg, Sweden, influenced clinical performance of twenty clinicians. According to the press release, “cardiologists committed fewer catheter errors, while performing the virtual procedure in less time, and subjecting the virtual patient to less X-ray imaging and smaller injections of contrast agent during the final run compared to the first one.”

The American College of Cardiology press release…

The system homepage at Mentice…

The product brochure (.pdf)…

via MedGadget

After 75 years of invasive and over 50 years of interventional cardiology, cardiac catheter-based procedures have become the most frequently used interventions of modern medicine. Patients undergoing a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) outnumber those with coronary artery bypass surgery by a factor of 2 to 4. The default approach to PCI is the implantation of a (drug-eluting) stent, in spite of the fact that it improves the results of balloon angioplasty only in about 25% of cases.

Abstract