Penrose-St. Francis Health Systems selects CardiacAssist's TandemHeart System

CardiacAssist Inc. announced today that Penrose-St. Francis Health Systems, Colorado Springs, Colo., has adopted the company’s TandemHeart® System.

“We pride ourselves in offering our patients innovative cardiovascular treatments that are not widely available”

Penrose-St. Francis Health Systems is in select company: TandemHeart is now being used in nearly 90% of the “Best U.S. Heart & Heart Surgery Hospitals” as ranked by U.S. News & World Report—with nearly 1,900 TandemHeart procedures performed to date at 150 hospitals across the U.S.

“We pride ourselves in offering our patients innovative cardiovascular treatments that are not widely available,” said John R. Mehall, MD, Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Penrose St. Francis Health Systems. “Therefore we are very proud to be the first cardiac center in southern Colorado to offer this important new life-saving technology to our cardiac patients.”

FDA-cleared TandemHeart can be placed rapidly by both interventional cardiologists in a cath lab and by cardiac surgeons in an operating room to provide short-term circulatory support to patients requiring additional cardiac assistance. The device provides effective and reliable temporary circulatory support for critically ill patients. Hemodynamic support includes a high net blood-flow rate of up to five liters per minute in the catheterization lab or up to eight liters per minute in the OR—more than twice the amount of other available technologies—and is fully reimbursed by Medicare under existing DRG codes.

“TandemHeart establishes a whole new paradigm for treating cardiac patients quickly and aggressively,” said Michael Garippa, CEO and President of CardiacAssist. “Many great hospitals such as Penrose-St. Francis Health Systems are becoming aware of the significant benefits of TandemHeart for their cardiac patients, which is why we believe more passionately than ever that TandemHeart is destined to become standard of care in extracorporeal circulatory support.”