Endo Pat 2000 » EndoPat

Endothelial Function Assessment

Mark — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:19:10 +0000

The medical community has long sought a cost-effective, reliable, non-invasive method to improve the detection of endothelial dysfunction, in order to screen larger segments of the population safely and reliably, and to enhance follow-up for sufferers of cardiac disease. Itamar Medical’s Endo-PAT2000 is meeting this challenge, and is ideally suited to enhance the traditional clinical settings’ diagnostic capabilities. The Endo-PAT2000 can be used in any setting, from hospital bedside to outpatient clinic.

Endo-PAT2000 is the leading medical device for noninvasive endothelial function assessment. It is FDA-cleared, CE-marked and used in preeminent clinical institutions, research centers and Pharmaceutical clinical phase studies in over 40 countries. It is incorporated into numerous multi-center and population-based studies such as the Framingham Heart Study. Research using Endo-PAT has yielded more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and abstracts. It is becoming widely recognized as the standard method for endothelial function assessment. Some of the features that make Endo-PAT appealing are its ease of use, user-independence and immediate, automatically calculated test results. It provides clinicians with a reliable and reproducible index of endothelial function in a 15-minute, office-based test.

Endothelial Dysfunction

Mark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:09:42 +0000

Endothelial Dysfunction is the result of the cumulative damage to the endothelium by cardiovascular disease risk factors such as genetics, smoking, Diabetes, high blood pressure and others. These risk factors cause the endothelium to malfunction: it secretes less of the protective molecules, such as Nitric-Oxide, and secretes substances which promote atherosclerotic plaque formation. Leading doctors at the Mayo Clinic proclaimed in a 2003 paper that “endothelial dysfunction may be regarded as the ‘ultimate risk of the (cardiovascular) risk factors.’” It was identified as the missing link between cardiovascular risk factors and subclinical atherosclerosis. Endothelial dysfunction is now widely recognized in the medical community as the earliest clinically-detectable indication of heart disease. Unlike subclinical atherosclerosis , endothelial dysfunction, with proper treatment, is reversible.

How is endothelial dysfunction diagnosed?

Until recently, experts used various methods to assess endothelial function. These methods are categorized as either:

Invasive – which is painful and with a certain amount of risk; or

Noninvasive – which is user-dependent, meaning test results are prone to high variability between users, limiting its use to expert research sites.

To diagnose something as serious as endothelial dysfunction, a method is needed that can function with consistent accuracy, independently of the user. The Endo-Pat2000 provides this combination of noninvasive, ease-of-use, independent of the user, while providing reliability. It has been scientifically validated in close to a hundred publications from clinical studies in top research centers (e.g., Framingham Heart Study, Harvard, Mayo Clinic and hundreds of others) around the world and is the method used to assess endothelial function in leading centers.

In order to avoid confusion, please note that there are several noninvasive methodologies to assess cardiovascular disease risk. But all of them target subclinical atherosclerosis, which is when vascular health has already been compromised to a certain extent. This degeneration of the vasculature is irreversible. While endothelial dysfunction plays a key role throughout these phases of the atherosclerotic disease, it is not what these tests of cardiovascular risk measure.

Endothelial Function

Mark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:07:06 +0000

The “normal” or healthy endothelium is involved in regulating homeostasis by secreting substances which protect vascular health. Chief among these substances is Nitric-Oxide – a two atom molecule, which is considered to be the hallmark of normal endothelial function. Together with several other substances, Nitric Oxide is involved in locally regulating processes such as

Vascular tone
Inflammation
Coagulation
Oxidation

If these processes are not strictly regulated, they can lead to impairment of vascular health, leading the way to subclinical atherosclerosis, all the way to cardiovascular disease.

EndoPat 2000

Mark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:04:29 +0000

The Endo-PAT2000 is a compact, easy to use device that adds an important dimension to cardiovascular medicine by enabling physicians to reliably, easily and non-invasively measure endothelial function.

The Endo-PAT2000 is FDA approved, and has been extensively studied, with over 100,000 tests performed, and 70 peer reviewed publications. It is now available for clinical use by general practitioners, cardiologists, urologists, and other MDs.