In May 2002, Dr. Alois Langer was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for pioneering the development of the automatic implantable defibrillator. Working with Drs. Michel Mirowski, M. Stephen Heilman, and Morton Mower, they patented the device in May of 1980. Today over 300,000 at-risk patients have them, and the devices are over 99% effective. This winter, I had the privilege to speak with Dr. Alois Langer. We discussed how he became involved in electrophysiology, and the progression of the AICD.

Over the past year, the group at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago was fortunate to be an active participant in the FROSTY trial of cryotherapy in the treatment of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). It was the first U.S. trial of this technology, which utilizes a 7 French catheter (Freezor®), very similar in the feel and performance of catheters used routinely for radiofrequency (RF) ablation. The technology and the study came from CryoCath, the first company to produce a catheter capable of delivering a freezing lesion through its tip.

To reduce QT measurement error, a new method was tested in which high-gain, high-speed, simultaneous 12-lead electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings were obtained during a single cardiac cycle. To increase its predictive power, the utility of combining QTD with the QRS duration for predicting susceptibility to ventricular tachyarrhythmia (VT) was analyzed. A total of 113 patients referred for electrophysiological study underwent baseline simultaneous 12-lead ECG followed by electrophysiological study to determine VT inducibility. Twenty-six patients had inducible VT while 87 patients did not. QT intervals and the width of QRS complex were measured from a single cardiac cycle with high-gain (8 times normal) and high-speed (100 mm/second) 12-lead ECG recordings.

The Acuson AcuNav™, part of the Siemens Corporation, is a catheter that brings ultrasound technology inside the heart. This technology allows physicians to have clear intracardiac details of the hearts structure during complex procedures. This device provides images that are unparalleled in detail resolution and penetration, down to 15 cm in the heart utilizing high resolution 2-dimensional and color doppler images of intracardiac anatomy. This new device enables physicians to see areas of the anatomy that were not previously seen with other technologies.

In October, Illinois Masonic Medical Center became the first hospital to broadcast a live Internet webcast of pulmonary vein isolation for atrial fibrillation, an innovative treatment procedure for atrial fibrillation, which affects about 2.2 million in the U.S. The surgery was successfully performed by Jose Nazari, MD and Pradeep Maheshwari, MD. Illinois Masonic is one of a few hospitals nationally that perform this sophisticated procedure routinely; this was the second of four webcasts that Advocate Health Care will produce and broadcast during the next 9 months. Illinois Masonic is a 527-bed hospital designated with a Level I trauma center. In a typical year, physicians and the hospital’s highly-skilled nursing staff see more than 20,000 inpatients, 149,000 outpatients, 35,000 emergency patients and handle 142,000 patient visits to primary care and specialty centers. Illinois Masonic is part of Advocate Health Care, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, and is ranked as one of the nation’s