Slashdot Mirror
Imaging Breakthrough "Sees" Lung Disease
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to BusinessWeek, an Israeli startup, aptly named Deep Breeze, has developed a high-tech replacement for the 200-year-old stethoscope. This noninvasive device can draw, in seconds, an image of your lungs by listening to its vibrations. The Vibration Response Imaging (VRI) system could already be used in Israel, Europe and South Korea. Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration approved its introduction in the US. But don't expect to see one of these systems used by your local physician anytime soon. This VRI system will carry a price tag of over $40K."
That really no where near the price of a MRI machine so I'm pretty sure that it is as capable as the article makes it sound than thats not that much to spend. Several hospitals in my area have spent 100+ million in renovations.
40K is not a lot for a medical imaging device. I work in an imaging lab, and if anything that is on the cheap side. The higher end CT scanners run well over a quarter of a million dollars, and most of the X-Ray scanners are at least tens of thousands.
I'd say for ultrasound, the average would be to have a patient scheduled every 30 minutes. Also, a lot of people don't realize it... but you don't even need a bachelor's to be an ultrasonographer. Its an associate's degree.
My last visit to the hospital: $866 for 25min spent in the hospital. Doctor's consultation itself was probably 3-4min. The fire dept took me there and 2 nurses from the hospital spent a total of about 10 min collecting my personal information, moving a stand to hold the IV pouch and getting me some Gatorade.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
IIAMS (Medical Student), and here how I see this device being used, docs will continue using regular stethoscopes because most diagnoses quite straightforward. When there are unusual sounds that require additional insight, then you break out the one VRI that is available in the physician's group. It would be similar to how most cardiac auscultation is straightforward, but when there is something particularly unusual, you send a person for an echo cardiogram. Even there where there is a well established, safe, accurate, non-invasive, relatively cheap imaging modality, you still listen first. Also, imaging isn't infallible, and just like different physicians can disagree about lung sounds, different radiologists can disagree about image interpretation.
Note that imaging with sound generated in the lungs naturally is apparently not possible because the source and frequency of the sound cannot be known in advance. The use of the word "Imaging" is apparently fraud.
The BusinessWeek article says, amazingly, begging the question, "Its sales prospects are not just hot air"
Notice that, at present, there is no period at the end of that sentence, suggesting that the article received little or no attention from an editor.
Slashdot has run several stories about companies that had products that they were supposedly trying to bring to market, but which, on close examination, apparently were just methods of collecting investor money, with no real hope of return.
Roland Piquepaille, the author of the Slashdot story, is apparently paid to get articles in publications an on blogs. There has never been any information, that I know of, about whether he pays someone at Slashdot or Slashdot's parent company. His Slashdot stories apparently never note Mr. Piquepaille's affiliations with the companies being discussed.
Slashdot has often been scientifically challenged. The Slashdot article The Car That Makes Its Own Fuel has a +5 moderated First Post that expresses the consensus of the comments on that story.
[0] Obviously not all patients, but (say) 30-50% of those who come in complaining of shortness of breath or extended bouts of coughing. Or patients with known emphysema or asthma, who just need to be monitored.
Just junk food for thought...