New stroke-preventing device demonstrated

Researchers from Atritech, now part of Boston Scientific, have developed the WATCHMAN device, a small mesh umbrella that can be inserted into part of the heart cavity to prevent the formation of blood clots that cause strokes. Currently, the anti-coagulant drug warfarin is used to prevent strokes, but the drug comes with risky side effects. The WATCHMAN device gives patients another option. It has already been approved for use in the European Union and Australia, and secured investigational approval from the FDA in 2009. To help train doctors how to use the device, doctors from the University of Leipzig Heart Center in Germany are publishing the full WATCHMAN placement procedure in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), the world’s first and only peer-reviewed, PubMed indexed, science and medicine video journal.