PDSHeart and Medtronic Form Partnership to Offer AEDs for Home Use under New Medicare Rules

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 14, 2004--

Turnkey Solution for Physicians Adds No Cost to Practice, Lets Patients Rent-to-Own Life-Saving Technology

PDSHeart,(R) Inc., a national leader in cardiac monitoring and arrhythmia management service, said it has formed a partnership with Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE:MDT), to begin offering physicians a monthly turnkey service plan to provide automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for patient home use. In cases of cardiac arrest, AEDs provide powerful electrical shocks to restore life-saving heart rhythms.

Recent changes to Medicare guidelines now allow patients to rent-to-own the life-saving AED technology. The PDSHeart program adds no cost to a physician practice and is affordable to patients under their care.

The American Heart Association estimates that up to 450,000 Americans die each year from sudden cardiac arrest, with nearly 80 percent happening in the home. Out-of-hospital survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest are about 5 percent. It generally takes six to 12 minutes for the average U.S. emergency medical services (EMS) team to arrive at the scene of a medical emergency.

PDSHeart President and CEO Sean Heyniger said his company would provide the Medtronic LIFEPAK(R) CR Plus AEDs to the medically indicated market. PDSHeart already provides a variety of arrhythmia monitoring/management devices and services to over 100,000 patients annually from more than 18,000 physicians and hundreds of hospitals and clinics across the country. Medtronic is the world's leading provider of external defibrillators.

Although not everyone can be saved from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), early defibrillation can dramatically improve survival rates. Recent studies show up to 70 percent of victims survive when AEDs are accessible and used within three to four minutes.

"AEDs should be as common in the home as smoke detectors," said Heyniger. "The technology has advanced to the point where the devices are easily used by non-medical personnel and are very portable. PDSHeart's new monthly AED service enables physicians to offer high-risk patients an affordable option that has very positive outcomes," he said.

The risk for sudden cardiac death is greatly reduced if a patient has quick access to an AED, Heyniger said. Post myocardial infarction (MI) patients are at the greatest risk for as long as 18 months.

"Even with average EMS response times to deliver a shock to a patient as fast as 8 minutes or more, that results in only a 20 percent or less chance of survival. Every minute that passes drops the chance of survival by as much as 10 percent," said Heyniger. Unlike defibrillator models intended for use by healthcare professionals, AEDs do not require extensive medical knowledge to understand or operate. The device is programmed to analyze the heart's electrical function, enabling trained non-medical professionals to respond to cardiac emergencies. The fully automatic feature of the LIFEPAK CR Plus means people administering to the victim never have to push a "shock" button as the unit is designed to analyze the heart's rhythm and deliver a shock if one is needed. This feature makes the LIFEPAK CR Plus a preferred AED for home use.