CPAP. Such an innocent-seeming acronym, no? It stands for continuous positive airway pressure, which also comes across as pretty harmless. I use one of those things, though, and I have to tell you something. They're a colossal pain in the you-know-what. The only thing worse than a CPAP machine strapped to your face is obstructive sleep apnea (which I have) or central sleep apnea (which I don't as far as I know). Here's the deal. You strap one of these masks over your face – over your nose in this case – and it blows air past the obstruction...

On This Date: The birth of Emil Theodor Kocher, MD, Swiss surgical pioneer With the pace of change in the modern world and the emphasis on what's just around the corner, it can be edifying to take a moment to ask where we've been. And so we reflect for a moment on the work of Emil Theodor Kocher, MD, who was born 170 years ago on this date, Aug. 25, 1841. Kocher was born in Berne, Switzerland, where he earned his medical degree in 1865. He took the position of director of surgery at the Inselspital (Island Hospital), also in...

Life is full of choices, not all of them pleasant. For device makers of late, this definitely holds true. Firms in the venture capital end of things are not necessarily worried that VC has utterly abandoned med-tech, but it would appear that the start-up might find the going tough, even though firms with a little more development are getting more love from investors. As my colleague Amanda Pedersen noted in Medical Device Daily recently, a recent report by CB Insights (New York) indicates that the number of VC deals for med-tech continues to tail off, dropping from 184 in...