SignatureMD Outfits Affiliated Physicians with Panasonic's CardioHealth Station

Panasonic Healthcare, through its affiliate Cardionexus, announced that SignatureMD, a healthcare services company based in Los Angeles, California, has become the first concierge medicine company to incorporate Panasonic's new CardioHealth Station into its standard of care. The CardioHealth workstation is a portable, non-invasive cardiovascular imaging device which helps detect patients' hidden risk of heart attack and stroke. It will now be available to SignatureMD's entire national roster of concierge physicians.

With CardioHealth Station technology in their offices, physicians will be able to scan patients for hidden plaque build-up and increased thickness in the artery wall -- common signs of cardiovascular disease risk. Testing is non-invasive, painless, and completed in minutes with results that are available immediately.

The CardioHealth Station, developed by Panasonic Healthcare, an affiliated company of Cardionexus, operates on a built in portable ultrasound system optimized to perform a non-invasive examination of the carotid arteries. It provides an automated real-time measurement of the intima-media thickness (IMT) and allows the user to search for arterial plaques. A touch-screen keyboard allows the user to input various parameters related to traditional cardiovascular risk factors. A built in calculator provides risk scores commonly used in a variety of medical environments (Framingham Risk Score, PROCAM Health Check Score, Reynolds Risk Score, Risk score based on the SCORE Project). This information is supplemented with an IMT measurement of the artery to generate a comprehensive report to aid the physician in assessing cardiovascular risk.