Year 2007 marks the 30th year of this publication's analysis of U.S. and international med-tech, with Biomedical Business & Technology having issues of our predecessor newsletter beginning from 1983.

To highlight what has or has not changed in this industry, we here provide excerpts of news items from these earlier publications.

October 1983 —

"YAG LASERS DOMINATE OPHTHALMIC MEETING

Some 1,500 ophthalmologists attended the German Ophthalmology meeting in Heidelberg September 18-21, Europe's largest symposium and exhibition for this specialty.

Highlight of the poster session was a working prototype of a scanning laser ophthalmoscope, develoed at the UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG'S Institute of Applied Physics. The system utilizes a HeSe laser and incorporates a very sophisticated active focus control (AFC) for tracking the eye position. The AFC uses an adaptive optical feedback system for laser beam control. It eliminates certain optical aberrations which would otherwise diminish the fundus image quality.

Zeiss debuted a sophisticated computer and television based system for performing fluorescein angiography. The instrument can calculate the dye dilution curves in real time. The video camera monitors four areas of the fundus. The unit featues an eye tracking system that monitors the reflected light off the optic nerve head.

"U.S. DEVELOPMENTS

New initial public offerings are on the increase, indicating the 'half closed" public financing window is opening up again. During the past 12 months some 150 medial products and services companies took the public route, raising nearly $1 bln. (Note: in a list of 22 offerings, four topped $10 million: Sunrise Medical, $19 million; Selvac, $13 million; E-Z-M, $13 million; Bio-Medical Technology General, $10.4 million.)

"Respiratory Product News in Brief

THORATEC LABORATORIES (Berkeley, Calif.) developed a respoiratory assessment sytem that permits real-time monitoring and long-term trend display of expired gas concentrations. Called RAS 10000, it is deisgned as a signgle-patient unit in mobile cart configuration.

"Speech Aid for Laryngectomy

PARK SURGICAL (Brooklyn, N.Y.) introduces the Artificial Larynx Vibrator allowing laryngectomy patients who cannot produce esophageal voice to speak again or use the telephone

A new artificial larynx which helps to produce sound from 500-8,000 Hz, about the range of natural speech, has been developed at OSAKA UNIVERSITY (Japan). Contrary to current artificial larynx prostheses (made by BIVONA SURGICAL, LUMINAUD) its rubber valve is mounted parallel to the breathing stream. In the US. Alone, close to 30,0000 persons have lost their "voice boxes" due to laryngectomies; about 11,000 new cases of larynx cancer are diagnosed each year.

"BUSINESS BRIEFS

DEPUY (BOEHRINGER MANNHEIM) saw its Porocoat modified Austin-Moore cementless total hip prostehsis FDA approved, 16 months after a PMA application was submitted and some 15 months following orthopedic panel approval ... To eliminate the need for cement, the all chrom/cobalt alloy prostheses has a surface coating of porous metal beads (150-400 microns sintered to its metal stem, promoting tissue ingrowth.

"World's first human trials with a laser catheter for the removal of plaque from coronary arteries were performed in France (out of FDA reach) by Daniel S. Choy, M.D., Lenox Hill Hospital (New York). All five patients underwent coronary artery bypass following the procedure that utilized a special fiber optic catheter connected to an Argon laser."