INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

MEDICAL
Aquadex FlexFlow
Ochsner Health System
Key innovation: an ultrafiltration process to remove
water and salt from the body at a rate controlled by the
attending physician
Biggest clients: cardiovascular patients
Where they’re based: New Orleans
Top executive: Mark French, vice president of the
Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute
Year introduced: 2007
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI
PATIENTS WITH CONGESTIVE heart failure often suffer
life-threatening excess fluid retention that doctors formerly
removed with intravenous diuretics. That was until
the invention of the Aquadex FlexFlow Fluid Removal
System in 2002.
The Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute was the first
to use the system locally and has treated some 20 patients
since employing the device last year. The institute credits
cardiologist Dr. Hector Ventura with leading the push to
offer the procedure here.
“I knew many of the people who were involved in the
(development of the) device,” said Ventura, director of the
institute’s Cardiology Residency Program. “This machine
will help take the fluid away without creating more problems
for the patient.”
Aquadex uses ultrafiltration, a process used in dialysis,
to remove water and salt from the body at a rate controlled
by the attending physician. The device can remove up to a
pound of water and salt per hour without adversely affecting
kidney function, heart rate, blood pressure or the electrolyte
balance, according to Congestive Heart Failure
Solutions, the Minneapolis medical device company that
holds the patent for the Aquadex system.
The system is small and portable, engaged by inserting
catheters into patients’ veins. Aquadex patients achieve a
28 percent greater net fluid loss over standard care, according
to the 2006 results of a medical trial of 200 patients,
and a 63 percent reduction in days rehospitalized for heart
failure over standard care. These results reduce medical
costs to hospitals and improve the quality of life for
patients and their families, CHFS emphasizes.
Susan Reyes, a local CHFS representative, said hospitals
can buy the system for $25,000 per unit and offer treatment
for less than $1,000 per session, accounting for disposal
filters that are $900 each.
While Ochsner was first to use the system in the New
Orleans area, Reyes said the procedure is now available at
Tulane Medical Center and the Louisiana State University
Interim Hospital.
Ventura shared one of his most memorable cases to
date, a lady who was treated with the system for seven
days.
“She lost about 30 pounds of fluid. She was very
grateful.”•
— Diana Chandler
Dr. Hector Ventura, cardiologist and director of Ochsner’s Heart and Vascular Institute, led the push to offer the Aquadex System FlexFlow
to remove water and salt from patients.
New Orleans CityBusiness 35A